Uproar’s bizarre new dress code

One of our favorite gay bars in D.C. recently created a bizarre public relations nightmare for itself. Here’s some backstory and a rundown of what happened.

Backstory: Uproar Lounge & Restaurant is a gay bar in D.C.’s U-Street neighborhood. Uproar has a large rooftop and hosts a weekly all-you-can-drink beer bust on Sundays. There’s typically free food and a live DJ at the event. It can get pretty rowdy, but it’s a fun time.

This weekend, Uproar announced a new “dress code” via Facebook. The bar’s post was poorly-written, but seemed to ban flag football t-shirts during the Sunday beer bust. It also failed to give a clear reason for the rule, which left everyone to speculate in the comments.

Screenshot of Uproar’s Dress Code.

Then drama ensued.

The post had well over 100 comments before it was deleted, but the consensus was that the dress policy appears to be targeted at the gay flag football league.

Screenshots from someone involved with the business indicate that Uproar wanted to curb the rowdy behavior of the footballers. There are also screenshots of the same person joking about serving dead rats to the footballers.

The comments continued to pile on throughout Sunday. One person accused the footballers of turning the place into a frat-house. Then someone else posted a video that purportedly shows the owner pouring a Fireball shot directly into a guest’s mouth.

Meanwhile, rival bars swooped in and attempted to court the football teams. It was quite the spectacle.

The proper way to announce a new bar policy

Uproar’s post was finally deleted on Monday morning, but the damage appears to have been done. The strangest thing about this entire situation is that it was so easily avoidable.

New bar rules are usually going to upset somebody, but the best way to avoid a PR dust-up is to make sure that your new bar rule is clearly tailored to solve a specific problem. Once you’ve narrowed down the problem, you may realize that you don’t need a new bar policy after all.

Is the rooftop too crowded? Consider some crowd control measures like only allowing a specific amount of people upstairs. Are people getting drunk and belligerent? Cut them off, ban repeat offenders, or don’t over-serve your patrons in the first place.

Banning a specific t-shirt doesn’t solve any of these problems. The policy just unnecessarily alienated a large portion of Uproar’s Sunday customer-base and provided a wedge for other bars to steal loyal patrons.

Importantly, if a bar does decide to enact a new policy:

1. State the policy clearly — “Here’s the new policy and the problem it is designed to address.”
2. Inform your entire staff of the policy before it is announced. Have them direct any questions to a specific person.
3. Designate a manager to answer any questions via email or Facebook promptly. Don’t let speculation run wild. 

Finally, make sure that no one affiliated with your business posts disparaging things about your customers. The receipts always come out at times like this.

Update 3/20: The bar owner deleted the Facebook post and issued an apology, explaining the rationale behind the dress code. (E.g. the footballers were rude and causing property damage.) The bar owner’s Facebook apology is inconsistent with statements from the bar’s lawyer reported by the Washington Blade, which blamed the bar promoter for the post.

Update 3/20 – part 2: The Washington Blade article has now been deleted.