Bars are in general a horrible investment. Most bar owners best way to make money is to sell it to someone who thinks "it would be soooo cool to own a bar".

People come in, buy an "expensive" drink, and hog a chair for a long period of time. Revenue per square foot is pretty low while they sip that drink slowly and talk.

If bars were big money makers, there's be way more corporations running bars around the globe. But reality is, that's the one industry they never got a foothold in. The closest you've got is "Bar and Grill" places, which mostly exist because of a giant menu of Sysco Foods based crap they can microwave or drop in a fryer and sell at a huge margin.

Bars exist because people have midlife crisis's all the time.