The ground
Bars work in Fort Collins
Fort Collins has a dense bar trade for a city its size. Old Town alone holds a tight cluster of cocktail rooms, taprooms and music bars, and the student population around Colorado State University keeps a steady stream of low cost and late night demand running alongside it. Breweries and taprooms spread out toward the north and east of the city, and each one competes for the same searches: where to drink tonight, which patio is open, which bar shows the game. Paid search in this trade is mostly local and cheap enough that a handful of venues bid on the obvious terms, which leaves the longer searches, the ones about a specific street, a specific night or a specific kind of room, largely open. Owner operators make up most of the trade here, with a smaller number of groups running two or three venues. The demand is there every week of the year, and it shifts with the seasons, the campus calendar and the weather.