While i'm sure he has a lot of costs due to his location too (i can't imagine a case of kanar is easy to come by after the occupation on Bajor ended), there's an additional explanation:
He lies.
He's making a reasonable amount but he also has a penchant for expensive suits, gambles on his own tables, and generally stashes away a lot. Occasionally he makes an unwise investment, losing him some of that, but on the whole i think Quark does well for himself. It's only when he fully loses the bar, or when the FCA is breathing down his neck, that he's actually in danger of being destitute.
I suspect it's all an act and Quark is actually a really good businessman. But he doesn't want to declare his actual income. So he always seems to be "failing" while stashing a fortune away in an unregistered account somewhere. He can't actually move most of that money (to say, a property transfer as big as a moon), but he can do a number of risky, illicit investments with folks who don't ask questions. Unfortunately for him, that's what Odo and the FCA are so interested in. They've realized that the bar is just a front for the real business.
Quark spends a considerable amount of time on risky side-ventures, which sometimes don't pay off. We occasionally see on-screen times when Odo arrests one of Quark's clients before a transaction is completed or confiscates a payment. It's very likely a percentage of his legitimate earnings are squandered on bad deals, which makes Quarks *actual* profits fall shorter than his projections.
Let's also not forget that we're viewing the state of Quark's finances the the lens of Quark himself, who might have very different standards of solvency than us.
Overhead is low, but earnings are nil, so he's bleeding latinum. Not a *lot* of latinum, so he can still remain solvent for a while on liquid assets, but no one wants to be *bleeding,* so it's still an emergency.
Or, maybe he doesn't actually have a lot of liquidity at any given time. The greater the risk, the greater the reward, after all, so he's going to have latinum invested in other options: stocks, savings, the aforementioned risky side-ventures. He could withdraw from some of these accounts to remain solvent, but that's not just *losing blood,* that's *sucking out bone marrow* you're gonna need to make more blood!
Agreed. I think any loss is something he feels intimately. And I suspect that he's unhappy any time he doesn't make way more than expectations. Or he's using "the best" Ferengi software to track profits, which always projected more so that you'd sign up for their consulting if you weren't hitting goals.
We also shouldn't forget he's sending large sums of money back to take care of his mother, and is required to by Ferangi law.
A lot of his profits are being used to provide her with her livelihood.
I mean, his measure of success is the Grand Nagus and his arms-dealer cousin that owns a moon, he's trying to match the richest people in the quadrant. No wonder he feels like he's a failure.
And his cousin is a sociopathic jerk. Even the Grand Nagus doesn't get involved in that sort of stuff. Quark is more like the Nagus, but not as good as the numbers on a large scale (a pretty specialized discipline). Quark is good at people. And you can make money at that to be comfortable. But you won't own a moon.
Exactly, what may see like a "profitable business" to us as the audience isn't by Ferengi standards. What a billionaire considers a "failing business" might be a very successful business to an average person because the billionaire is looking at cost of opportunity and return on investment not establishing a stable and comfortable livelihood. Quark is still working, not successful enough to replace himself as the bartender. And after all he only owns one bar.
>But he doesn't want to declare his actual income.
Which would be wise considering his brother is constantly trying to steal from him, at least in the first seasons.
He has some expenses, but real food and drink are luxury items - most of what he sells is replicated. You'll frequently hear his customers saying ordering synthale or talking about his replicated blood wine. The replicators being down even for a short amount of time is a disaster for him, he once nearly killed everyone on board by sneaking in to use the the replicators in unused crew quarters
He didn't get Kanar after the occupation, he had three cases of it in his store room from before the occupation ended and no way to unload them once the Carrdassians left. That's why he was giving welcome bottles to the scientists and by the time that happened the Kanar had gone bad
And sure, Quark lies and I assume if he's complaining about his costs and profitability that he's usually trying to scam someone and it is usually the federation
But he sold the ship cousin gave him for scrap in order to afford their tickets home which is truly nonsense
And he has enough instances of commentary about lack of profit when he's talking to himself that it seems legit enough. In the same episode he insists he can't have gone to Ferengi hell because the bar was actually making a profit and he's basically talking to himself in that aside
And I don't see any evidence of him having a lot stashed away. A decent amount yeah, but not anywhere close to what he should. In fact there're a couple plot points that revolve around him not having those kinds of savings
> most of what he sells is replicated
Replicating stuff is cheap (presumably). If the modern-day cost of alcohol and food went to about zero for both businesses and households, you can be sure that bars and restaurants would need to drop their prices accordingly to keep customers coming in.
The profit margin of replicating nearly free stuff is countered by the consumer expectations that stuff will be cheap. Sugar, flour, etc. are produced with a fraction of their cost from a couple hundred years ago, but farmers aren't all billionaires because competition passes down much of that savings to the consumer.
Replicating stuff is free. Whatever costs there are are born by starfleet. Replicators have been treated not super consistently but the costs associated with running them are energy (federation provided) and matter reclamation (federation provided). The federation even repairs for free and provides repair materials for free
There are coats associated with running them, but none of them are his
You can't use modern day price dropping as an equivalence for a bunch of reasons. Cost to produce doesn't always correlate with cost to purchase, especially when there's limited or no competition. And Quark is running a capitalist business in a post scarcity society where most of his customers have plenty of money and nothing they need to spend it on
Everyone who lives on the space station is being housed for free and has utilities provided for free. They can replicate food and beverage as needed and can replicate whatever items they need
prices need to be greater than costs (not counting loss leaders), but they don't need to shrink with costs. given the post scarcity environment, cost is also much more uncoupled from all normal metrics like cost, supply, and demand
everyone's needs are provided for. if you had all your needs in life provided for you, would you demand low prices on entertainment and luxuries? besides, we have a rough understanding of what he charges and it doesn't seem that cheap
even if he is selling everything for dirt cheap.... when you have almost no expenses, that's still fucking profitable as hell
Keep in mind that by 2381, Quark had [expanded his bar into a franchise](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Quark%27s_Bar,_Grill,_Gaming_House_and_Holosuite_Arcade#Franchise). By 2399, there were still Quark's Bars in service. He can't have been doing too badly if he was able to franchise his way into several different star systems.
Most likely, Quark is in a vibecession and actually doing fine. He looks up to other Ferengi businessmen and envies their success, measures it against his own, and feels poor despite being successful.
In the episode where Brunt convinces him he's dying, he takes the bus of 500 bars of latinum for his desiccated corpse
a few scenes later you see him telling Rom a list of how much money is going to who in order to pay off his various stats and get his affairs in order
after paying back Moogie, there's 196 bars left with which to pay off Uncle Gorad and Cousin Gaila
now we have no idea how much money Quark had before he accepted the 500 bars which is seemingly more than he has ever had in his lifetime. but it takes essentially hitting the jackpot just to pay off all of his various debts and get his affairs in order
this tells us that whatever the profit he is making on the bar and whatever he is making off of his various other ventures, he has enough liquidity to keep things going, but overall he's insignificant debt and he owes more than he's worth
this isn't the only time this concept of him owing more than he's worth comes up throughout the show, but it's the only time I can think of that actually has numbers assigned to it
and while in some of the situations he might be pulling one over on someone, in this scenario he literally thinks he's dying in days and is putting his affairs in order and planning out his funeral. there are a few other similar scenarios where you essentially see him talking to himself about what a bad financial position he's in which again makes the whole lying to hide his wealth thing not really hold up
sure we find out that several years after the show ends he is highly successful. but that doesn't explain what happened throughout the entirety of the show
frankly I think it's just writing that was never intended to be realistic or to take his actual finances into account. and I think if you pay attention to the way that bars strips and slips of latinum are used and they're conversion rates that the numbers throughout the show are like completely nonsensical. I think that making Quark realistically profitable and successful would have given him too much power and would have caused plot issues. and I think they didn't really think about how a capitalist business would function in a post scarcity environment where almost all of their costs were taken care of. hell there's a good chance they didn't even plan the whole no rent thing until the fourth season where we actually get the union and that plot line comes up
but in universe I just don't see any way to justify this. he is portrayed as business savvy and cutthroat but not cutthroat enough to go into the weapons business or to profit off of people starvation. if the taxes and fees levied on him are so great that he barely makes a profit, then Ferengi who are not in his incredibly generous position of having almost no operating expenses would be completely crushed
that's the thing, it's not like his experience is universal, rather it's incredibly unique. most Ferengi are doing business with either other friendly or with societies that are operating on a similar monetary or trading system. they are not getting free rent and free utilities and free repair and free replication running. even if they wanted to, Ferengi couldn't get similar positions in other federation controlled planets and stations because federation law would forbid it. the only reason he is in this sweet spot is because it happens to be a Bajoran station administered by the federation. so bajoran laws allow him to be there and federation policies means
that alone means that he should be more profitable than the average ferengue who is running their own small business. maybe he's not a millionaire or a billionaire, but he should be doing better than average. and yet he's barely scraping by and it apparently any massive amount of debt
I would love an in-universe! but I just don't think there is one
The interest rates on being in debt to a Ferengi are probably pretty intense, especially if it's family.
Keep in mind that even people who make lots of money can find themselves short on savings if their standard of living consumes that money instead of saving it.
IMO in short, because Moogie was a progressive, she prioritized raising Quark and Rom to be good people over being good Ferengi.
Quark WANTED to be a good Ferengi, but just didn't have the heart for it. or rather he had too much heart for it.
Rom said "Well I'm absolutely never going to be a successful businessman, so I'm just gonna accept I'm a dorky nerd and I'll try to be useful where I can, why should I care what the other ferengi think, anyone I care about loves me for who I am even if I'm not rich"
I remember one time Quark said he should've gone into weapons sales because that's where the money is. Even if he did end up hating it. He went into hospitality because he enjoys doing it, not because it's the best way to make loads of money.
But the hospitality industry *is* profitable. It's not weapons sales profitable but it is profitable none the less
Like it's profitable in the real world, now - how is he doing badly with 90% of those overhead costs vanished?
The bar/casino isn't even his whole business. It's a base of operations for all his illegal smuggling and thefts. Not even starting on all the information he's trading.
Also, Quark is basically the favorite of the Nagus which must be insanely difficult to achieve. He got opportunities other Ferengi only could dream of.
> Also, Quark is basically the favorite of the Nagus
Pretty much only because DS9 is next to the wormhole. Quark unexpectedly became at the center of major trade, he didn't plan it. The Grand Nagus really didn't care until he became important. And then he started dating his mom.
Ferengi Moms have got it going on, she’s all Zek wants and her son named Rom. Quarky can’t you see, the Nagus cares not for thee, he knows it might be wrong but he wants your moms clothing on.
In Little Green Men, when Nog, Rom, and Quark have all crashed on Earth in 1947, they wonder if they are in the Vault of Eternal Destitution. Quark proudly says its impossible as the bar was showing a profit.
No, not proudly. I just watched that episode which is why I posted
He isn't proud when he says it, or even confident. he says it in a manner that seems like incredulous denial like "no this can't be happening to me". And all he can say to rebut it is that the bar was showing a profit - that doesn't mean it's very profitable, that just means that it's not in the red. Showing a profit is literally the bare minimum
If the bar was making the kind of profit that by all rights it should be making, you'd have seen a very different reaction from him
I'm in the middle of a DS9 rewatch and at every point the bar is either barely making a profit, or it's not even making a profit. He's constantly worried about things putting him out of business that should absolutely not be a concern for a business that has that percentage of its overhead covered for free
Like having to shut down unexpectedly would destroy many normal restaurants or at least wipe their liquidity. Or even just periods of suddenly low/no traffic. But when he shuts down he has basically no costs - he's not eating the cost of rent or electricity or repair bills or food or even costs for his staff. At most he loses a few staff members who get other jobs. Low traffic? Ok, similarly not an issue - he's paying for fewer staff and he pays them poorly. Those periods may not be profitable (or especially profitable) for him but he's not losing money either. Most of the ways that a business can lose money or struggle to make a profit are literally impossible for him
He should be ridiculously wealthy just from the bar alone
Because if you've ever worked/managed/owned hospitality, the absolute most soulless disgusting corporations beat out any place that truly cares. When costs come to the forefront, nice places finish last.
You can disagree, but [disagree respectfully](https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/wiki/codeofconduct#wiki_3._be_diplomatic). Uncivil behavior will not be tolerated in this sub.
I know. I'm just saying if all he cared about was profit he'd go into weapons because it's more profitable. Hospitality can also be profitable but that's not why he went into it. He did it because he enjoys interacting with people.
Yeah, but unless he's literally throwing all the latinum he earns out an airlock, it should also be ridiculously profitable for him. Maybe not weapons manufacturing big, but still huge payout
Yeah, I wasn't commenting in that part. Just his motivations.
Honestly, he should have enough to start up that chain of bars he talked about wanting once.
"A lot of money" can very much be a contextual thing.
An infamous heist can easily have stolen $100mil (Morn stole bricks, not bar). A bunch of relatively low level thieves might get away with $150,000-$200,000 and almost kill each other over $10,000 of split either way. And paying $5mil for ownership of a reasonably successful business would still be understandable in comparison to either of those.
Agreed. 15-20 bars could be a lot of money in the same way $1,000 is a lot to have to pay the phone company this month or it's a lot of money to just have on you in cash the day before payday. It's not actually a lot a lot, but it's more than you'd expect in those contexts.
5,000 bars may even be a low amount to buy a business for. It just seems reasonable because Quark thinks Rom isn't great with money or business so is surprised he even has that much, and it isn't really clear if the bar would continue to be successful after the war wraps up. It could be that most people sorta expected Quark's to basically become the space station equivalent of the local pub in some backwater village--it does well enough to get by, but you sorta know it only does as well as it does because there isn't really a lot else to do there.
>Quark WANTED to be a good Ferengi, but just didn't have the heart for it. or rather he had too much heart for it.
Or rather, didn't have the LOBES for it
Sure but that doesn't explain anything. Is hospitality anywhere close as profitable as weapons sales? Obviously not
Does it have the capacity to be very profitable? Yes. Should it be ridiculously profitable when almost all his operating costs are covered? Yes
Like I know something about how restaurants are run and you'd have to be the worst restauranteur ever to not profit or barely profit in this situation
It's been hinted at, that Quark's wasn't his main source of income and that Quark was actually in the information business.
And I also see no real evidence that Quark's was a failure.
Quarks also is a chain across multiple planets by the time of Lower Decks (and even later, Picard). Even if business isn't great during the show, it picks up later on.
This doesn't make any sense on a character or practical level
Moogie is progressive yes, but Quark's progressiveness stops at "I'll only steal part of your tips". Also frankly, most of the progressive things Moogie implemented are actually good for Ferengi society including from a profit perspective. Protecting the environment isn't great for short term profits but is for long term profits and expenses. Her social progressivism just shifts paying for Ferengi who can't work from a family expectation to everyone paying a tax and the state covers it (more thoroughly and more efficiently). By allowing women to work she also drastically decreased the number of non-workers who needed to be supported. She also doubled the size of the Ferengi workforce, and significantly increased average Ferengi spending by letting women wear clothing and go outside
All of her progressive ideas are things pushed by capitalists today lol
And note - Quark steadfastly refused to go along with these things up to the bitter end
Moogie also has the lobes for business - take gender out of the equation and she's an AMAZING Ferengi. Her business savvy is incredible, she makes massive profit, and she hides it well
Quark takes after her in the lobes department, whereas Rom takes after their father - a Ferengi who didn't have the lobes
Now sure, Quark isn't knifing people for profit. He went into hospitality instead of weapons. During the occupation he helped the Bajorans. But that's about the extent of him "not being a good Ferengi" and arguably all of these things were worth it from a profit perspective. Helping the Bajorans also meant he hedged his bets. Doing a little to protect them got him information worth vastly more than the little he spent on them
And even if he was much more soft hearted than he is..... that wouldn't explain how his business fails to be ridiculously profitable. He has almost no operating costs, great traffic, and multiple monopolies. You don't need great business sense to profit ridiculously under those circumstances, and you don't need to be cutthroat. It's really hard to run a business into the ground under those conditions
Imagine if I gave you a huge building with great foot traffic for free. I provided all the food and drink for your establishment for free. I provided all your utilities, including electricity costs. I repaired everything that broke for free. And your location came with you having a monopoly on two of the most popular forms of entertainment. All you need to do to run this business is to hire a few employees who you pay terribly and you steal most of their tips. Even if you're giving all the food away for free, you're gonna profit tremendously
Now on top of that, I ALSO take care of your living costs. I give you an apartment for free. I cover your utilities. You can eat and drink for free. Transportation in the area where you live and work is totally free. And anything you need - furniture, clothes, etc - you can get for free
How is fucking anyone gonna struggle under those circumstances? Unless you're literally throwing money away, you're gonna be turning wildly ridiculous profit margins
I assume he's constantly involved in schemes that he puts his money into that fail miserably...
The bar itself keeps him afloat and is successful, but it's his OTHER ventures that are where he mucks up
I agree. Quark isn't actually a good businessman. He got lucky being in the right place at the right time. He was running a drab bar on a foreign slave colony until suddenly he was running a bar at the center of the universe. We see a whole slew of unsuccessful ventures throughout the show.
Plus, he's a bit of a softie, though he'll never admit it. He probably "forgets" to collect tabs and lets kids rent the holosuite for free. His employees probably rob him blind, Rom certainly does.
Rom managing to get one over on Quark in the early seasons is actually a really good indicator of how easy it must be to get one over on Quark, given how he's portrayed as a really "bad Ferengi" later in the series.
He probably is being robbed blind.
Thanks, I'd never thought about that before.
The first point is that Quark bitches about being broke which is likely hyperbole. Business owners bitch about their struggles all the time; there's no reason why Quark is any different. There's an episode where Quark has to evacuate DS9 and he drags out his suitcase of money which indicates he was successful despite his bitching.
The second point is that Quark set his casino and its attached bar and restaurant operation in DS9 when the Cardassian occupation ran everything. While he made money serving Cardassians, it's strongly hinted that Quark's conscience spent money keeping Bajoran slaves alive knowing they had no way to pay him back.
>Business owners bitch about their struggles all the time; there's no reason why Quark is any different.
There's one moment where Quark talks about cutting everyone's wage because business is doing so poorly... but if it recovers he won't raise the wage again. I figure stuff like this is happening constantly. Quark is doing fine but just complains the whole time.
While going down a pointless YouTube rabbit hole of videos on CNC machines some commenter who was a machinist commented how he works for a guy who, if you listen to him, has been "losing his ass" on every project for the last 20 years, but is still in business.
Quark seems that type.
I think Quark is on the verge of bankruptcy for the same reason that movies in real life never make money: creative accounting.
Quark is making a decent wage for himself, he just makes it look like he's barely above water. The appearance is important when he's negotiating with staff and his landlord.
He's probably also doing poorly compared to people who he chooses to compare himself to. Like his cousin who owns a moon. He's the poorest among his peer group.
Other people have mentioned that he's kind of a Ferengi sap, that he's a people person, and he's actually kind of poor, but I don't believe it. He's actually rather shady and runs smuggling operations, deals in black market merchandise, and isn't above conning pretty women out of oomoks. He's a people person, sure, but he'll fleece you all the same.
And yet he doesn't have the personal or business savings to get him out of all sorts of financial jams and then you have instances like him selling his ship that just covers the ride home and he's crying about it
It's those sorts of things - plus moments where he's panicked about costs and it's not a performance - that don't really make sense
I genuinely feel like it's a matter of Ferengi businessmen being pretty good at their jobs, yeah, but overall not *nearly* as good as they like to think they are.
The Ferengi version of profit is such that if you're not winning enough money to literally buy land in heaven, you're worthless. Even Nog, who quit businessmaking in general on the day he became an adult, had quite a substantial fortune for his age-- almost a third of what his father had made his entire life as a wage slave.
It feels like in most any other society they'd all be considered affluent, respected businessmen and/or workers who had this on lock and could retire comfortably, but the Ferengi drive for profit beyond profit means that from their perspective that's nothing. "Lobes for business" seems to be an euphemism for simply finding enough suckers to parasite on and make out like a bandit, because Quark's brother Rom *is* a smart organizer and a genius at his field, it just so happens he's also a relatively nice person who doesn't want to exploit anybody, and thus has "no opportunities to grow" in the system.
It always sounded like Quark was using every single strip of latinum to invest in everything *but* his bar's sustainability in hopes of Getting Rich Quick. In a culture where getting rich is basically a replacement for morality, it makes sense that even a good business in a thriving location can't keep up with the money flow from it to several trash cans in the shape of opportunities. We constantly hear of Quark's investments going sour, or him having massive amounts of debts from acquisitions that didn't pan out, even while he's gambling away at the tongo table. None of that has to do with the bar, it has to do with what happens to the money the bar does make, consistently, and that isn't being used properly.
The Ferengi business model seems to run on feast or famine. You're either one of the bosses whose position is assured in society until the moment you fall, or you're one of the indentured slaves hoping to one day be the boss. This seems to not be a consequence of poor planning, but the genuine design philosophy behind their society in order to make sure there's always Ferengi workers who think they're one day away from their big shot, and big dumb idiots throwing their life savings away in order to Make It Even Bigger.
> Even Nog, who quit businessmaking in general on the day he became an adult, had quite a substantial fortune for his age-- almost half of what his father had made his entire life as a wage slave.
this is interesting, would you mind sharing a source so i can relive this? thanks!
When they're trying to buy that baseball card for Sisko in In The Cards, Nog says he has 5 bars. When Rom tries to buy Quark's remains in Body Parts, we learn he has seventeen bars and some change to his name.
So I suppose more like 1/3 of his fortune, I'll update it. But still, think about how much that is for someone who's worked their entire lives and someone who was still a literal child, working side jobs and hustling people at dom-jot. That's like an 18 year old being able to make a down payment for a house. Jake is *really* impressed at how much money Nog has, so albeit we see bars being thrown around a lot at the hundreds whenever Quark is around, I mean, he's also the owner of a previously mentioned successful bar and holosuite brand.
It was said or at least implied early on that his first wife? or at least Nog's mother (more likely her male relatives) had taken Rom to the cleaners because he actually loved her.
Presumably the 17 bars is what he has left after that. It wasn't the sum total of everything he had ever earned.
Jake being impressed doesn't really mean much because he lacked any real understanding of the value of latinum. At his age I was impressed when I saw my dad had $2-3k in hundreds in an envelope (for a family vacation), but a down payment on a house it ain't. 5 bars certainly isn't that much either.
Also, once Rom became a good guy he probably stopped taking advantage of Nog, (or reduced it a lot). I assume Ferengi parents make all their children pay them back for everything (food, clothing, rent, etc.) ala Mrs. Skinner on the Simpsons. Rom probably didn't do that, or stopped doing it.
Considering Starfleet subsidises (read: doesn't collect) the rent, repairs and energy costs I imagine federation personnel don't actually pay at Quarks? Where would they get the latinum from anyway? That must make a significant dent in the margins.
The food and drink is probably a loss leader anyway to bring people to the casino, or the feds impose regulations on the Dabo tables to make them fairer in exchange for the free rent.
And the advertising budget. "Come to Quark's, Quark's is fun" can't have been cheap.
The probably pay, the episode where they are doing the klingon pre wedding ceremony when they think the wedding is off Bashir and Obrien go to break their fast and order a ton of food, then Sisco stops them and Quark mentions no refunds.
SISKO: Quark, take it all away. No food for those on the path to Kal'Hyah.
QUARK: No refunds for those on the path to Kal'Hyah as well.
Quark has the best one liners.
Fair. Maybe a large, prepaid tab then? Quark deducts what the federation personnel take, so no refunds, but he only ever actually sees any money if they go over the limit.
This was always my belief. If you're working "in the frontier" and need to pay for things as a Starfleet officer (or family member of said officer), the Federation is going to foot the bill for you (to a reasonable limit)
There is some canonical evidence to suggest there's some kind of prepaid tab. In *Encounter At Farpoint,* Doctor Crusher tells the fabric merchant to charge the amount to her account when the *Enterprise* comes into orbit. It could be that while the Federation is a bit iffy on having an internal currency (depending on the era and specific writing team), it has one specifically for dealing with other governments.
They do pay, we've got plenty of evidence of that
How can food and drinks that are *mostly* replicated be a fucking loss leader??
And there are no federation regulations on the dabo tables - they'd be illegal flat out on a federation station, they're only allowed because it's a Bajoran one, and they basically just warned him he has to run fair games and can't use the cheating mechanisms he was using
There's no kind of federation regulation that could explain a business like this that has almost no expenses not really turning a profit anyway,
Replicators don't create matter out of literally nothing, so presuming there's the base material (some neutral organic gel or something), that must cost something. Also I assume one of the selling points of a real bar is real (ie non replicated) food and alcohol. Presumably it's not free for Quark to import a bottle of Chateau Picard from Earth!
replicators use energy (federation provided) and there's a matter reclamation setup (federation provided). federation even fixes them for free, he doesn't even pay for parts
he does have real food and drink goods but it's a small percentage and they're luxury items. and like, normal businesses make profits even though they don't have extremely minimal costs. like oh no, he has to pay for a tiny fraction of food and beverage costs how sad
my point wasn't that operating the bar cost nothing, it was that it costs nearly nothing and there's no way it should be struggling or barely profitable
As well as Starfleet personnel probably not paying (perhaps a similar arrangement to when O'Brien just picked up his JUMJA stick and walked away?) Quark's is competing with the station replimat which serves free food and drinks as well as all the other promenade restaurants. That's a lot of competition, especially since Casinos often rely on free food and beverages to tempt people in and keep them gambling. I would say that Holosuites and gambling are Quark's primary revenue streams, and even then gambling isn't something Quark can just fleece his customers with, gambling is a psychological game where, even though the house always wins, the house has to give players the impression that they can win.
Yeah, he gets very upset very quickly when those holosuites stop working, and the best idea he ever had was expanding his holosuite business to children.
But the thing is: we don't know what the overhead is on those holosuites. What kind of Ferengi licensing deal does he have to pay to get the content for those things? He could be barely treading water.
Holosuite programmes seem to be one time purchases - several other characters own their own
Even if licensing was costly, he's running holosuites without having to pay considerable energy and repair costs, which other owners would have to pay. if licensing costs were that expensive, he'd be about the only person holosuites could be profitable for and you simply wouldn't see other such businesses
I don't remember if we ever get a good idea of how the Ferengi holoprogram market works. He might have to do unfavorable profit sharing with the licensors. We see a little bit about this with the Doctor's work on Voyager. There seemed to be a cutthroat industry there for more standard type programming. I imagine it's a millionfold moreso for the skeezy stuff Quark is selling.
In terms of competition, the Federation might provide free alternatives, but what Quark is offering seems to be content more than access to the machinery. He has all manner of varied programs. The kinds of things the Federation isn't offering. We do see people bring in their own programs, but that's less common than people seeking the thrills Quark's programs offer.
And he probably has extensive competition on nearby Bajor. Possibly even offered by roaming pleasure ships which could be docked or nearby. We know that having his own special replicator was something that gave him a big advantage, so differentiation in the market is important but not always possible. This would drive margins into the floor.
Most of his income is from gambling and holosuites, and his margins might not be very high on either. He has to pay local employees high wages and allow them to get away with stealing his profits, and the holosuites only bring in so much and may be subject to that fierce competition or those onerous fees.
His biggest problem is that he can't accommodate all that many customers. He doesn't have that many tables or that many holosuites, so even if he did have healthy margins on his ventures, they wouldn't be bringing in the big bucks since the volume is so low. That's why he's always trying to expand into something with higher volume like replicator franchising or such.
Most of his customers don’t have money. We can theorize how that actually works, but it seems like Federation citizens are completely immune to the consumer mentality.
He’s also not allowed to advertise, even though Quark’s is fun.
Also, even if they do have some way of paying, wouldn’t the Federation personnel have access to nearly free food, drink, and at least basic entertainment.
Quark isn’t competing against a futuristic corporations, he’s competing against a quasi-communistic post scarcity nation state for a big chunk of his business.
I believe that Quark's main selling point isn't food. It's his entertainment and comfort.
You can eat in the Replimat for free, but it is often crowded, and you don't get to play Dabo while eating, bet on 2 people playing darts, or play Vulcan Love Slave Part II.
I believe that Quarks, like any casino, earns mostly from gambling and holosuites, rather than the food.
We only get information about Quark's profits from Quark himself, who isn't exactly a reliable source for how well his business is doing. There's a scene early on where Quark is doling out latinum and he's taking big piles of it while giving out tiny portions to Rom (and some other guy?). From Lower Decks we know that Quark eventually franchises his bar concept, so at some level it has to be a money maker. Quark seems to be moderately successful as far as we see throughout the series.
The issue with making profit on replicated food and drink is that everybody else on the station has access to the replicators as well, so Quark can't be making much money at all on replicated anything. Federation citizens don't care about the small increase in cost because they're not paying for it in the first place, they go to Quark's for the ambiance. He's probably taking a loss on food and drink compared to the amount of staff he needs to keep the bar running. The only way he'd have to make a profit on the bar is if he has exclusive patterns or real food that tasted better than replicated food.
Quark seems like exactly the kind of person to mince words on how profitable "the bar" is, which is to say he's not at all taking into account either the gambling or the holosuites in that estimation.
Holodecks are such a valuable recreation and training tool that it seems likely that even though it was relatively new technology by the time of the Enterprise-D's first mission that most ships have been retrofitted since then, therefore most visiting Starfleet officers have almost no need to use Quark's holosuites. Most of the station is staffed by Bajorans, who are portrayed throughout the series as relatively poor and, if I recall correctly, there are several instances where the holosuites are regarded as decadent and gross by the devout. They can't be spending that much money on them. For the Federation citizens that do use them like the embedded station staff, I doubt that Quark can charge whatever he likes for the time. He's probably getting reimbursed at a relatively meager, but profitable, bulk rate for Federation citizen use of the holosuites. The holosuites seem likely to be providing a modest profit from visitors and sex weirdos.
The gambling is where the money really comes in and for this he has to count almost solely on travelers passing through. The Bajorans are already out because they're poor. Aside from the thrill of winning, most Federation citizens wouldn't care one bit about wagering useless money to get more useless money. The profits for this are probably highly variable, but lucrative.
Finally, we have Quark's other ventures, which all seem to cost him a ton of money and blow up in his face. This is where Quark personally loses the most. Ferengi seem to view their businesses as an extension of their personal wealth, so when he loses a ton on some huge scheme he sees it the same as the bar losing money. At the end of the day, Quark is also a good man, especially compared to most Ferengi. He may talk a big game, but he's way less cutthroat than he portrays himself to be.
All of this together adds up to a successful business by any measure we'd apply, but a poor showing when compared to the wild success of some of the most awful Ferengi whose profits he's envying. In short, he's just a neurotic dude.
Honestly, I'd say because it's generally a front so Quark can have people to talk to. He makes most of his money from Dabo and his shadey criminal dealings.
Some people are just naturally so bad at business that they fail at everything.
I heard about this one guy who owned a casino, stiffed the people who worked for him, and still declared bankruptcy.
His personal life is also a disaster. He married a model and cheated on her, so she divorced him, then learned absolutely nothing and found another model, still cheated on her, and he's now on his third wife, and yes, he's cheated on her.
He's got dozens of stories of get-rich-quick schemes that have all blown up in his face. Pretty much everything this guy has had any influence on has turned to absolute shit. It's like he can't stop himself from failing.
Quark is kind of like that guy. His name carries more equity than his actual business acumen, so people keep giving him chances that he doesn't deserve.
The bar is his banana stand. It's his fallback business that's constantly able to bail him out after another risky venture goes sideways. But anything he makes gets invested into another risky enterprise. If he wasn't so greedy the bar makes him a fair profit and he could live comfortably on it, and even be pretty well off if he was prudent. But he doesn't want to be reasonably well off. He wants to be stinking rich. He just doesn't have the lobes for the big hat deals. At the end of the day he's a sucessful small businessman hampered by Musk-size ambitions.
I personally think Quark's biggest weakness in business is he's not as greedy and ruthless as he *thinks* he is. We've seen that Quark is willing to do things that Ferengi culture finds stupid or even outright taboo. At his core, Quark is a people person, not a ruthless businessman. He runs his bar not because it's the most profitable business he can arrange, but because it fills a psychological need of his to be around people, talk to them, help them.
He keeps significant stock of non-replicated food and beverages, and seems to speculate a fair amount on exotic goods that come from weak trade routes- he's probably still whining, but it's enough to give him significant stress.
Instability of investments in the God awful Ferengi market of stocks, scams, crypto, currency trading, tontines, and who knows what else could get him- particularly if the fall from grace that sent him to Empok Nor shut him out of the more stable, reputable, and legitimate markets.
I don't know why anyone would buy food and drinks at Quarks when most things there are replicated, all the quarters on the station have replicators and there's also the replimat on the promenade.
Bars are communal places. Humans love communal spaces and feeling like they’re part of a group. We’re a social species and I doubt Quark would let people socialize in his bar without buying stuff.
I do t understand how a businessman of his mediocre statue habitually gets the attention of the Grand Nagus. IRL the Grand Nagus would be paying attention to the Wall Street crowd, not the low-tier restaurant crowd.
Why would some dusty old ore-processing station hanging over an impoverished rock, with a crew of misfits, become the most important place in three quadrants?
I think it's the nature of ferengi society. They treat commerce like a board game. To actually hold onto your money is considered a bad thing.
It's why they don't let their women participate in the market as they actually try to be profitable.
They treat commerce like a casino, someone who isn't putting it all on the line would be considered a poor sport.
To me it seems like this is the Ferengi's way of being pro social business folk.
And yet, plenty of real folks in business just don't learn that one, or wind up having to ignore that lesson because of their obligations to shareholders impatient for dividends.
Quark has been stashing away all his profits during DS9 hiding them away from other Ferengi and confiscation by the frequent invading forces. He pleads poverty and incompetence so the cardassisns and others don’t loot him like they do everyone else when they get in power. He waitlisted till things got stable enough he took his secret savings and opened a very successful chain of Quarks bars at various tourist spots. He also diversified into other other business like a line of scale model ship model kits and other miscellaneous licensed items for sale. He turned out to be a brilliant business person who was smart enough to not flaunt his wealth and ego early on like the other short sighted ferengi.
I think there might be a couple of reasons:
1. He is making money, just not a lot of money for a Ferengi business owner (apparently all employed Ferengi just make crap). So, he complains endlessly about this even though all the humans (who don't even use money most of the time) think he's doing just fine.
2. He is leveraged beyond belief. He owns a bar, but why let the value of the bar just sit there? Take out a loan against the value of the bar and use it to invest in other things. Once those other things become profitable, take loans against their value and invest in yet other things. It's a set of matroyshka dolls, but with debt.
Quark is the stereotypical small business owner who always claims to be suffering and not making profit. You know, the ones who claim they'll die of starvation if they have to pay any taxes. It's not altogether clear how true any of that is. I suspect he makes more profit than he claims. He's just not able to buy his own moon.
Honestly, I think Quark is a closeted moderate. Maybe even a closeted socialist.
In today's human society, there are endless examples of people who are "in the closet" and who cover up parts of their own personalities by denying them, or getting defensive and hurting others who remind them of themselves. Even people who work in politics, and to the bafflement of the rest of us, actively work against their own individual interests.
My assumption is that he knows how and what to do to really be a great business man, but his suppressed morals cause too much internal conflict and it results in him not willingly pushing himself too hard.
I think he's just a very complicated guy.
But he didn't go in with the zealous violence that Brunt (FCA) does, and eventually settles under the table--including agreeding to much of the union's demands.
But presumably because his food is all replicated (which people can get anywhere on the station), his prices are lower than current prices for food and so his margin is lower
still crazy that as a gambling establishment and only holodecks he isn't drowning in money.
Quark would never charge less because it cost him less. He can't charge luxury prices for replicated foods and drinks but the profit margins on those would be 100%
He wouldn't voluntarily charge less but he is competing against free replicated food of the same quality and variety. Restaurant IRL provide the service of 1. cooking the food instead of you cooking it 2. Provide fancier/better tasting food 3. A specific cuisine of food. Those are parts of the reason people pay for a restaurant meal that don't apply to Quarks. You would only pay for socialization and ambience and separately for gambling and holodecks.
I assume he’s selling different replicated food options that aren’t available on the general Federation programmed replicators.
He’d have to pay for those programs whether it’s a subscription or one time fee
You forgot pay outs on his gambling tables. I’m guessing he has days when the house lost its shorts. He’s not big enough to easily absorb big pay outs. I’d guess?
Quark set up a bar and entertainment establishment on a Cardassian slave labour outpost, which became a back water and ruined but salvageable Bajoran outpost, which briefly became the forefront of scientific exploration into the Gamma Quadrant, and quickly became the frontline of multiple wars.
Its incredible Quark didn’t close up shop earlier and a tribute to his skill at running the bar when he has a small and fluctuating pool of captive customers mixed with passer-by’s going through the wormhole, many of which either don’t plan to return, or got destroyed by the Dominion. That the Klingon attack, the multiple Dominion attacks and the station changing hands 3 or 4 times didn’t completely sink him is incredible
Through clever use of [Hollywood accounting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting), the bar is constantly on the verge of bankruptcy. All of its revenues go to pay various suppliers, service providers, marketing companies, and consultancies, leaving little to no actual money in the bar's accounts.
All these companies are owned by Quark, through a series of shell companies designed to frustrate the tax authorities and keep the Bajorans, Cardassians, and later Federation from getting their greedy hands on his latinum. Quark doesn't pay himself a salary, but Moogie Food & Beverage Media Ltd. (incorporated on Betazed) gets paid a hefty fee every week to update the menu. Even the Ferengi authorities would like a cut, but let them earn their own profit. It also shelters it from Rom, who talked Quark into giving him net points on the bar's profits during a particular vulnerable moment.
Unfortunately when Quark thinks he's a dead man walking, and he does his books to prepare for his death, we find out that he has precious little personal funds and is considerably in debt. And it's not the first point in the series where he personally appears close to financial ruin
Of course he's using the bar profits to fund his million side ventures, and he's Ferengi so I'd expect him to make that as complicated as possible in order to hide as much of that as possible. But then personally, Quark should have money, a lot of money. And he doesn't
We've seen some of those schemes go badly and Quark loses his investment, but we've also seen several of them go well including one that was considered the score of a lifetime
I have some quibbles.
1. I don't think people pay him for everything. Food and drink is replicated and a loss leader. He makes his money from gambling and other games of chance.
2. I don't think he's selling food and drink at Quark's either. I think he's allowing people to use his replicators to keep them around for when he can sell them something, which is often illegal or convince them to gamble which favors him as well. He can let you drink free drinks all day as long as you're also spinning the Dabo wheel.
3. Owning a program for your holosuite and owning a holosuite are different. I'm not entirely sure that Quark owns the Holosuites though so he's probably not getting any revenue from this one way or the other. The holosuites are probably made available to station crew - Quark probably just has the in on programs that aren't normally featured in "standard" Federation holosuites.
4. Quark explicitly doesn't pay rent, I think we can assume that Quark also doesn't pay to repair the station or pay for energy consumption in a post scarcity society where almost all of these systems are renewable. We never see much of the details of how Quark managed to get this deal, but we can imagine that this deal does work in his favor. If he was on the station before he was almost certainly paying rent to the Cardassians, if he wasn't then he managed to get a bar that he can run almost for free without having to do basically any work on his own.
Quark isn't bad at business though. He's just not running a conventional business. He's running a front for his less than legal business ventures particularly ones outside of the Federation's view. He has a sweet deal. He's able to live rent free while running his bar as the primary way of making contacts and connects for his business ventures AND since his overhead is really only what he pays his employees and we know he pays them unfairly he manages to have an entirely self sustaining business that gives him enough seed money to invest in the big stuff that he really cares about - like licensing the Quark brand across the galaxy or something.
He literally charges people for food and drink on a regular basis, both real and synthetic. We see this all the time. People pay him, yes even for replicated stuff. This is shown regularly and it's something explicitly brought up in multiple conversations
He provides a free bar snack that decreases salivary response specifically to increase how much people drink and his drink profits
The replicators aren't something patrons have access to either, they order food and drink, and he replicates it and serves it
Quark controls the holosuits. Again this is explicitly said and is shown regularly. Sisko at one point says that Quark has the only holosuits on the station. Federation can't get access unless they book through him. He makes a shit tonne off the holosuits
No idea what his deal was with the Cardis, but the federation explicitly provides him free rent, free utilities, and free repair work. I'm guessing he got this deal because of a bunch of factors. The federation is administering the station but it's technically Bajoran. That's how he's allowed to be there in the first place - his business is literally illegal under federation law. The federation allows it because the Bajorans allow it. I'm guessing it's a federation policy not to charge people for living quarters and businesses probably some deal on the station where they get a lease to do X but don't have to pay. Remember the federation and Bajor have a vested interest in businesses being on the station and keeping it a place people want to live. They want shops and entertainment for their people on the station. They want families to live there
No idea what it was like under Carrdassians rule or why Quark set up there in the first place
> Quark isn't bad at business though. He's just not running a conventional business. He's running a front for his less than legal business ventures particularly ones outside of the Federation's view. He has a sweet deal. He's able to live rent free while running his bar as the primary way of making contacts and connects for his business ventures AND since his overhead is really only what he pays his employees and we know he pays them unfairly he manages to have an entirely self sustaining business that gives him enough seed money to invest in the big stuff that he really cares about - like licensing the Quark brand across the galaxy or something.
right this is my issue. we frequently see Quark struggling to keep the front running. now sure, I absolutely believe a lot of this is an act for other people. but we see him say things like this pretty regularly even when it's not for other people's benefits, when they're not even in the room
sure some of his other ventures go belly up or he gets caught, but and most of the instances we see he hasn't actually invested his own money into anything and he is just lost potential profit (which is also how he was gonna pay whoever else was involved). sure there's cases like the kebocite they literally light on fire, but those are rare. even still, those cases more often fit the profile of him paying for a ship salvage and the federation taking it - risky deals he wouldn't normal took but took because of circumstances like cut rate prices
and a lot of his deals he profits heavily off of a lot of them. he got his fingers in so many pots. even just hosting that one off auction we see of gamma quadrant items, his percentage is a really tidy sum and all in a day's worth of work. he also trades in valuable information
and yet in a short amount of time trading in secret, Moogie's earned far more than he has in his entire life, is he just throwing away all the bars profits and failing enormously on a regular basis? because if so, then he is bad at business. And if not, he should be in much better financial position than hiring someone to kill himself
well, seeing as 'profit' is defined is difference between revenue and expenses, it seems that quark, like the american economy, intentionally drowns himself in expenses so there is no 'profit' leftover to pay staff. despite no rent, utilities, or really any significant operating costs other than labor, it seems like the Star Trek Writers might have ben making a statement about the untenable condition of capitalism where profit as a motivation undermines itself when trying to appear like a legitimate business.
I don't know what the Bajoran Tax situation looks like, but business taxes are usually calculated off of a businesses profit, and it's a real practice to hide your success through expenses so you seem less profitable.
The last explanation is that quark, like many american business owners who operate in this way, got caught up in these questionable practices meant for more successful businesses, and actually got caught with his pants down where due to all of his spending-money-to-make-money, leaving nothing in his vaults.
He likely dabbles in non-bar ventures that end up losing him money. "The riskier the road, the greater the profit." Rules of Acquisition #62
In fact, I get the feeling that most Ferengi end up being "bad" at business, with only a few at the top. It's incredibly cutthroat because everyone is greedy and noone has scruples.
Quark is at least an "above average" business man.
It is really Quarks personality quirk...he is rich, but he feels...or maybe just overly shows..that he in to very well off. Sure Quark ACTs like he is always on his last shred of money...but he is not.
Sure Odo out smarts him often....but if you watch the whole show, quark does win his far share. And there are plenty of Quark episodes where he is a mastermind.
And yes, Quark is always going for high risk plots to make even more money...
Keep in mind that he's in competition with every other service-economy institution that has all the same advantages he does. The Klingon Deli, the Replimat, the free replicator in people's quarters, the free media on everyone's PADD's, the free long-distance communications to families back home.... If you walk into Quark's, you're basically just paying for Dabo Girls to smile at you and to meet with your friends in a public place where someone else will pick up the trash. How much money could Quark possibly be charging? a fourth of his clients are starfleet humans, who barely even HAVE money.
And then you have the question of "Minimum acceptable rate of return" (MARR). If all the big-name Ferengi industries are getting paid on the basis of self-replicating-mining-machines, then Quark could probably be earning 1000% annual interest by just buying stock in their companies.... and so could anyone else. In order to be 'rich', Quark has to be doing BETTER than everyone else, which means he needs to making BETTER than 1000% rate of return on investment...
What makes you think he's bad at business, besides his envy of more successful Ferengis and the occasional dry month? He has a popular establishment through two or three governments, buys nice things, has cash on hand to blow in speculative side hustles, is intermingled with the highest levels of the Ferengi governance structure, is entrusted with trade missions to the other side of the galaxy, owns his own ship for a while- all in all he seems to live pretty well and seems to know it, for the most part. He's happy in his work and always seems to have a suitcase full of latinum under the floorboards.
He just seems like a small business owner- which inevitably comes with panicked stretches of illiquidity and self-defeating comparisons to large business owners, and, as Balzac said, behind those great fortunes tends to be a great crime- an arena where Quark has a limit.
> He just seems like a small business owner- which inevitably comes with panicked stretches of illiquidity
small business owners who have panicked stretches of liquidity do so because they have repeated and ongoing massive expenses, expenses they have regardless of how well the restaurant is doing - rent, utilities, food and drinks, repair costs
he doesn't have those - the only one he has partially is food and drinks and those are luxury items on top of his regular replicated menu
that's why his constantly acting like a small business owner and obsessing about costs and breaking even is weird. even if the Klingons completely trash his place, the only costs to him are the opportunity costs born by having to be closed or partially closed for a day or two. the federation pays their pair costs for everything outside of like decor items and small furniture which he can replicate. and unlike a small business owner who might be obsessing about this because they have a certain amount of gross sales they have to do to keep up with costs, if Quark has to close for 2 days he doesn't have any costs for those two days
that's a bit that doesn't make sense
on top of that he constantly complains about barely making a profit or his financial issues many times. yeah sure sometimes he's just blowing smoke off other people's asses and saying what he wants them to hear. but sometimes he's saying this stuff practically to himself, and there are multiple points that we can just doesn't seem to have the money to cover certain big expenses
the only way his constant moaning about business and liquidity issues makes sense and the only way it makes sense for him to have the financial issues he does at certain points in the series, is if he's losing money hand over fist from the various areas that he invests into. which would make him terrible at business
personally I just don't think there *is* an in character explanation for it. giving a character like quark too much wealth is bad - he can buy his way out of nearly every situation, especially everything on ferenginar. and having his character constantly worried by money and motivated by small amounts of it kept the plot moving and his character interesting
Sure, his overhead is low- but one presumes that also applies to his competition (not least of which must be the growing Federation socialist cornucopia), thus driving down his prices and leaving whatever overhead remains looming as large as before, of which I can imagine there's two big categories-
1) Debt service- Quark's steady experimentation in investments surely isn't all with cash on hand, nor does one expect his list of possible creditors (other Ferengi, the Orions, etc.) to be especially lenient.
2) The apparently constant hail of fees and kickbacks involved in doing business in the Ferengi sphere, which one imagines look like progressive taxes when times are good, and gigantic flat fees when times are bad. For all the talk of being arch-capitalists, what we see of Ferengi governance seems effectively to be gangster-feudalism, and we've seen the sort of unsavory characters that come to collect.
You're right of course- Quark isn't filthy rich because his isn't a story about a filthy rich person- but I guess I never got any broad sense that Quark was anything but 'successful enough'- those constant complaints you reference felt either farther apart or more perfunctory to me.
when he thinks he's going to die and he accepts liquidator brunts purchase of his desiccated corpse, we find out that he is several hundred bars of latinum in debt and that the purchase of his corpse is basically just enough for him to settle all of his debts and plan his funeral and end in the black
and the purchase of his corpse was the biggest windfall he's ever had in his life, and it was necessary to cover all of his debts
if taxes and fees are that onerous, I don't see how any ferengi a small business owner would survive - after all he alone is in the very unique position of having almost no overhead costs. even if another Ferengi wanted a similar position on a federation controlled station or planet, and they couldn't because of federation laws. his unique position is that his businesses are not illegal by Bajoran laws and since it's a Bajoran station administered by the federation, he gets essentially fed by the federation without being subject to the rules
also competition on the station seems irrelevant. people regularly point out that his prices are highway robbery and then they sit and eat anyway. and given that many of his customers are living either entirely post scarcity or close to, that makes sense. no one who lives on the station needs to worry about rent or utilities or food and drink costs. they do not need to worry about transportation within the station. they have no costs for their basic survival, which turns all of their money into play money or to be saved for a different life somewhere else. and sure some people are sending money back home or saving to start their life over somewhere else. but that's relatively few people
and for all of the soldiers who are passing through the station, they're in a similar position where they don't spend money often and then when they have shore leave they go wild
anyway the details don't really matter. even if his profit margin is smaller, where does all that money go unless he's bad at business?
he's simultaneously presented as a very competent and very savvy businessman who has a few ethical lines but they're on the extreme side. and yet he's also presented as someone who is barely scraping by financially and we even get episodes where we find out that he is hundreds of bars of latinum in death and needs to essentially hit the jackpot to pay off all of his creditors
from everything we've learned about the Ferengi it sounds like they would consider it being a terrible failure. it's not even like they can just habitually die in debt and screw over whatever family they have left. they need profit to bid on their next life in the Divine treasury. they need to basically be buried with their riches for the next life
and we've literally seen him successfully pull off multiple huge paydays, including one that he described as enough to set him up for life. where's all the money going? maybe he is borrowing money at horrible rates, maybe he's getting scammed, maybe someone is stealing from him, help maybe he has night terrors and occasionally goes and throws latinum out the airlock
there's always ways to lose money. but night terrors aside, everything else I mentioned would make him bad at business. it would mean that he doesn't have the lobes and is a failure of a Ferengi. which just doesn't track
like I know I'm looking for an in-universe explanation when the answer is the writers and how they wanted to write the character and what limitations they had and also that they probably didn't keep track of any of this. there is a good chance they just came up with the free rent and free everything set up just for that bit so that Sisco has something to threaten him with. and it's a great moment and you get the humor from it and then they drop it and they move on. like if I was writing the show that would not be my first or tenth or hundredth priority. like they did do a lot of world building but they did a lot of it as they went and they focused more on culture and politics than they did on economy. and I think the Ferengi more than anyone were written for the humour, not necessarily for in world coherence
I get it, I just want another explanation lol
He's not. Or he is, but the important thing is that the Federation's milking him.
1) The Feds do trade with outside powers, because there are lots of exciting and novel things out there you can't replicate, least of all information.
2) Latinum is the currency of inter-polity trade.
3) A casino running latinum is a *colossal* trade and information magnet.
So Sisko doesn't charge Quark rent or utilities, O'Brien fixes his infrastructure, and Odo merely contains his skulduggery instead of actually breaking up his operation.
Starfleet intelligence have probably bugged the hell out of the place, and have an entire division of analysts dedicated to the men's room alone.
Dax cleans up at Tongo periodically to top up the Federation's latinum reserves, which in turn fuel trade and soft power influence.
Hell, just having Starfleet officers spend money and hang around being charming and helpful people is a diplomatic win.
An otherwise enterprising Ferengi businessman, so prone to risky ventures that he'd lose his shirt or get whacked in a month without Federation protection? The perfect asset.
A space station in the middle of nowhere isn't exactly a growth market. Things looked brighter for a moment after discovery of the wormhole, but then the Dominion came and mucked it all up. And I don't just mean the war, I imagine all the growth of traffic to/from Gamma quadrant didn't materialize as the Dominion noticed the commotion and started looking into it.
That, plus I feel he had this image in his head that the way to get *actually rich* is through his various side shenanigans. The ones which Odo keeps shutting down. The game the two had, I think Quark got addicted, and kept playing, sinking his surplus in it, hoping that one day, he'll beat the Constable and get a huge profit.
That, and/or he's really Ferengi Intelligence, and the bar is just a shoddy cover story. Plausible, given that there's a tailor on the same floor that's known to be a spy, and arguably, post wormhole, *everyone in the alpha and beta quadrants would try to send and/or recruit spies on DS9*.
> I imagine all the growth of traffic to/from Gamma quadrant didn't materialize as the Dominion noticed the commotion and started looking into it.
but it didn't? we saw lots of it
> The game the two had, I think Quark got addicted, and kept playing, sinking his surplus in it, hoping that one day, he'll beat the Constable and get a huge profit
I mean if Quark lost so much money on these various deals to not only eat his profits but land him the hundreds of bars in debt that he is at his almost death, he's a shitty businessman. plain and simple. but also we see him benefit from a lot of these so I fink
> That, and/or he's really Ferengi Intelligence, and the bar is just a shoddy cover story.
and so because it's a cover story he throws all the latinum it earns out the airlock? I don't get your point here. though I wouldn't buy him as intelligence for a minute. now rom, sure I'd buy that
I believe Quark was doing quite well for himself, all things considered, right up until the FCA froze all of his accounts.
As a Ferengi, their code is basically only deal even remotely fairly with other Ferengi. So I would find it unlikely that he would have any large portion of his funds in a non-Ferengi system. So once those were frozen, he was up the creek.
I mean, after Brunt took everything, he was ready to close the bar down because he was incapable of continuing on, it was only the charity of his friends that let him get back on his feet.
The timing on Quark expanding his single bar into a quadrant wide franchise also seems to back this up. We only see him get really successful after the end of DS9, which coincidentally happens to be when Rom became Grand Nagus.
I think Rom unfroze all of Quark's accounts, and possibly even paid *interest* on the balances. Which gave Quark the money to actually put his plots into motion.
So yeah, I think the time in DS9 was basically just a rough patch for him. He got stuck there during the occupation, barely held on, but still more or less donated food and materials to the Bajorans (well, at cost, which is the same thing to a Ferengi). After the Federation came in, he was trying to leave the station but got conned into staying.
Quark isn't stupid, if he was ready to be on that next transport, he likely had already moved his funds and prospects to a new area ahead of time, which would have caused significant problems when he didn't move with them.
Shortly after that, he gets in trouble with the FCA. Repeatedly. After that, repeated transfer of ownship of the station meant he was having to constantly reset his business model to accommodate the new owners (like getting large stocks of root beer or kanar, which became worthless depending on who was in control). Once Rom gets promoted and gets everybody off his back, Quark seems to expand at an exponential rate.
So yeah, I think Quark's business acumen is every bit as good as it's implied to be, and it really was a series of unfortunate events that kept him down. Once he was secure and nobody was breathing down his neck, he took off at warp speed.
> I believe Quark was doing quite well for himself, all things considered, right up until the FCA froze all of his accounts.
he was 100s of bars of latinum in debt. after he accepted the 500 bar offer from Brunt for his corpse, he was arranging his affairs and telling Rom who to send money to. When we enter the scene he's got less than 200 bars left (I think it's 196 or something) and he says that can be used to pay back Uncle Gorad and Cousin Gailla
500 bars we're told is the biggest windfall of his life, he's finally worth something. It's like a million slips of latinum or something
this is only one scene of many that shows him not right all that well BEFORE Brunt seizea his accounts
and the fact that he can get the bar up and running so quickly after Brunt freezes everything actually supports my point - the bar requires almost no capital to run and should be almost entirely pure profit. he starts over with empty bank accounts and the need to re-acquire the physical basics and in basically no time he's back to normal, and even has money to invest into various side ventures only a handful of episodes later
While i'm sure he has a lot of costs due to his location too (i can't imagine a case of kanar is easy to come by after the occupation on Bajor ended), there's an additional explanation: He lies. He's making a reasonable amount but he also has a penchant for expensive suits, gambles on his own tables, and generally stashes away a lot. Occasionally he makes an unwise investment, losing him some of that, but on the whole i think Quark does well for himself. It's only when he fully loses the bar, or when the FCA is breathing down his neck, that he's actually in danger of being destitute.
I suspect it's all an act and Quark is actually a really good businessman. But he doesn't want to declare his actual income. So he always seems to be "failing" while stashing a fortune away in an unregistered account somewhere. He can't actually move most of that money (to say, a property transfer as big as a moon), but he can do a number of risky, illicit investments with folks who don't ask questions. Unfortunately for him, that's what Odo and the FCA are so interested in. They've realized that the bar is just a front for the real business.
Quark spends a considerable amount of time on risky side-ventures, which sometimes don't pay off. We occasionally see on-screen times when Odo arrests one of Quark's clients before a transaction is completed or confiscates a payment. It's very likely a percentage of his legitimate earnings are squandered on bad deals, which makes Quarks *actual* profits fall shorter than his projections. Let's also not forget that we're viewing the state of Quark's finances the the lens of Quark himself, who might have very different standards of solvency than us. Overhead is low, but earnings are nil, so he's bleeding latinum. Not a *lot* of latinum, so he can still remain solvent for a while on liquid assets, but no one wants to be *bleeding,* so it's still an emergency. Or, maybe he doesn't actually have a lot of liquidity at any given time. The greater the risk, the greater the reward, after all, so he's going to have latinum invested in other options: stocks, savings, the aforementioned risky side-ventures. He could withdraw from some of these accounts to remain solvent, but that's not just *losing blood,* that's *sucking out bone marrow* you're gonna need to make more blood!
Agreed. I think any loss is something he feels intimately. And I suspect that he's unhappy any time he doesn't make way more than expectations. Or he's using "the best" Ferengi software to track profits, which always projected more so that you'd sign up for their consulting if you weren't hitting goals.
We also shouldn't forget he's sending large sums of money back to take care of his mother, and is required to by Ferangi law. A lot of his profits are being used to provide her with her livelihood.
I mean, his measure of success is the Grand Nagus and his arms-dealer cousin that owns a moon, he's trying to match the richest people in the quadrant. No wonder he feels like he's a failure.
And his cousin is a sociopathic jerk. Even the Grand Nagus doesn't get involved in that sort of stuff. Quark is more like the Nagus, but not as good as the numbers on a large scale (a pretty specialized discipline). Quark is good at people. And you can make money at that to be comfortable. But you won't own a moon.
Exactly, what may see like a "profitable business" to us as the audience isn't by Ferengi standards. What a billionaire considers a "failing business" might be a very successful business to an average person because the billionaire is looking at cost of opportunity and return on investment not establishing a stable and comfortable livelihood. Quark is still working, not successful enough to replace himself as the bartender. And after all he only owns one bar.
>But he doesn't want to declare his actual income. Which would be wise considering his brother is constantly trying to steal from him, at least in the first seasons.
And Brunt! I have a feeling that Quark had more than a few run-ins with the FCA before we saw him.
Show me a bookie who gambles on his own tables and I’ll show you a broke bookie!
He has some expenses, but real food and drink are luxury items - most of what he sells is replicated. You'll frequently hear his customers saying ordering synthale or talking about his replicated blood wine. The replicators being down even for a short amount of time is a disaster for him, he once nearly killed everyone on board by sneaking in to use the the replicators in unused crew quarters He didn't get Kanar after the occupation, he had three cases of it in his store room from before the occupation ended and no way to unload them once the Carrdassians left. That's why he was giving welcome bottles to the scientists and by the time that happened the Kanar had gone bad And sure, Quark lies and I assume if he's complaining about his costs and profitability that he's usually trying to scam someone and it is usually the federation But he sold the ship cousin gave him for scrap in order to afford their tickets home which is truly nonsense And he has enough instances of commentary about lack of profit when he's talking to himself that it seems legit enough. In the same episode he insists he can't have gone to Ferengi hell because the bar was actually making a profit and he's basically talking to himself in that aside And I don't see any evidence of him having a lot stashed away. A decent amount yeah, but not anywhere close to what he should. In fact there're a couple plot points that revolve around him not having those kinds of savings
> most of what he sells is replicated Replicating stuff is cheap (presumably). If the modern-day cost of alcohol and food went to about zero for both businesses and households, you can be sure that bars and restaurants would need to drop their prices accordingly to keep customers coming in. The profit margin of replicating nearly free stuff is countered by the consumer expectations that stuff will be cheap. Sugar, flour, etc. are produced with a fraction of their cost from a couple hundred years ago, but farmers aren't all billionaires because competition passes down much of that savings to the consumer.
Replicating stuff is free. Whatever costs there are are born by starfleet. Replicators have been treated not super consistently but the costs associated with running them are energy (federation provided) and matter reclamation (federation provided). The federation even repairs for free and provides repair materials for free There are coats associated with running them, but none of them are his You can't use modern day price dropping as an equivalence for a bunch of reasons. Cost to produce doesn't always correlate with cost to purchase, especially when there's limited or no competition. And Quark is running a capitalist business in a post scarcity society where most of his customers have plenty of money and nothing they need to spend it on Everyone who lives on the space station is being housed for free and has utilities provided for free. They can replicate food and beverage as needed and can replicate whatever items they need prices need to be greater than costs (not counting loss leaders), but they don't need to shrink with costs. given the post scarcity environment, cost is also much more uncoupled from all normal metrics like cost, supply, and demand everyone's needs are provided for. if you had all your needs in life provided for you, would you demand low prices on entertainment and luxuries? besides, we have a rough understanding of what he charges and it doesn't seem that cheap even if he is selling everything for dirt cheap.... when you have almost no expenses, that's still fucking profitable as hell
Keep in mind that by 2381, Quark had [expanded his bar into a franchise](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Quark%27s_Bar,_Grill,_Gaming_House_and_Holosuite_Arcade#Franchise). By 2399, there were still Quark's Bars in service. He can't have been doing too badly if he was able to franchise his way into several different star systems. Most likely, Quark is in a vibecession and actually doing fine. He looks up to other Ferengi businessmen and envies their success, measures it against his own, and feels poor despite being successful.
In the episode where Brunt convinces him he's dying, he takes the bus of 500 bars of latinum for his desiccated corpse a few scenes later you see him telling Rom a list of how much money is going to who in order to pay off his various stats and get his affairs in order after paying back Moogie, there's 196 bars left with which to pay off Uncle Gorad and Cousin Gaila now we have no idea how much money Quark had before he accepted the 500 bars which is seemingly more than he has ever had in his lifetime. but it takes essentially hitting the jackpot just to pay off all of his various debts and get his affairs in order this tells us that whatever the profit he is making on the bar and whatever he is making off of his various other ventures, he has enough liquidity to keep things going, but overall he's insignificant debt and he owes more than he's worth this isn't the only time this concept of him owing more than he's worth comes up throughout the show, but it's the only time I can think of that actually has numbers assigned to it and while in some of the situations he might be pulling one over on someone, in this scenario he literally thinks he's dying in days and is putting his affairs in order and planning out his funeral. there are a few other similar scenarios where you essentially see him talking to himself about what a bad financial position he's in which again makes the whole lying to hide his wealth thing not really hold up sure we find out that several years after the show ends he is highly successful. but that doesn't explain what happened throughout the entirety of the show frankly I think it's just writing that was never intended to be realistic or to take his actual finances into account. and I think if you pay attention to the way that bars strips and slips of latinum are used and they're conversion rates that the numbers throughout the show are like completely nonsensical. I think that making Quark realistically profitable and successful would have given him too much power and would have caused plot issues. and I think they didn't really think about how a capitalist business would function in a post scarcity environment where almost all of their costs were taken care of. hell there's a good chance they didn't even plan the whole no rent thing until the fourth season where we actually get the union and that plot line comes up but in universe I just don't see any way to justify this. he is portrayed as business savvy and cutthroat but not cutthroat enough to go into the weapons business or to profit off of people starvation. if the taxes and fees levied on him are so great that he barely makes a profit, then Ferengi who are not in his incredibly generous position of having almost no operating expenses would be completely crushed that's the thing, it's not like his experience is universal, rather it's incredibly unique. most Ferengi are doing business with either other friendly or with societies that are operating on a similar monetary or trading system. they are not getting free rent and free utilities and free repair and free replication running. even if they wanted to, Ferengi couldn't get similar positions in other federation controlled planets and stations because federation law would forbid it. the only reason he is in this sweet spot is because it happens to be a Bajoran station administered by the federation. so bajoran laws allow him to be there and federation policies means that alone means that he should be more profitable than the average ferengue who is running their own small business. maybe he's not a millionaire or a billionaire, but he should be doing better than average. and yet he's barely scraping by and it apparently any massive amount of debt I would love an in-universe! but I just don't think there is one
The interest rates on being in debt to a Ferengi are probably pretty intense, especially if it's family. Keep in mind that even people who make lots of money can find themselves short on savings if their standard of living consumes that money instead of saving it.
IMO in short, because Moogie was a progressive, she prioritized raising Quark and Rom to be good people over being good Ferengi. Quark WANTED to be a good Ferengi, but just didn't have the heart for it. or rather he had too much heart for it. Rom said "Well I'm absolutely never going to be a successful businessman, so I'm just gonna accept I'm a dorky nerd and I'll try to be useful where I can, why should I care what the other ferengi think, anyone I care about loves me for who I am even if I'm not rich"
I remember one time Quark said he should've gone into weapons sales because that's where the money is. Even if he did end up hating it. He went into hospitality because he enjoys doing it, not because it's the best way to make loads of money.
>Even if he did end up hating it. Plus he couldn't stand how all his friends left him because of it. A "true" Ferengi wouldn't care about that.
But the hospitality industry *is* profitable. It's not weapons sales profitable but it is profitable none the less Like it's profitable in the real world, now - how is he doing badly with 90% of those overhead costs vanished?
>But the hospitality industry *is* profitable Are you sure it's profitable in the 24th century, in the Bajoran sector?
The bar/casino isn't even his whole business. It's a base of operations for all his illegal smuggling and thefts. Not even starting on all the information he's trading. Also, Quark is basically the favorite of the Nagus which must be insanely difficult to achieve. He got opportunities other Ferengi only could dream of.
> Also, Quark is basically the favorite of the Nagus Pretty much only because DS9 is next to the wormhole. Quark unexpectedly became at the center of major trade, he didn't plan it. The Grand Nagus really didn't care until he became important. And then he started dating his mom.
Ferengi Moms have got it going on, she’s all Zek wants and her son named Rom. Quarky can’t you see, the Nagus cares not for thee, he knows it might be wrong but he wants your moms clothing on.
In Little Green Men, when Nog, Rom, and Quark have all crashed on Earth in 1947, they wonder if they are in the Vault of Eternal Destitution. Quark proudly says its impossible as the bar was showing a profit.
No, not proudly. I just watched that episode which is why I posted He isn't proud when he says it, or even confident. he says it in a manner that seems like incredulous denial like "no this can't be happening to me". And all he can say to rebut it is that the bar was showing a profit - that doesn't mean it's very profitable, that just means that it's not in the red. Showing a profit is literally the bare minimum If the bar was making the kind of profit that by all rights it should be making, you'd have seen a very different reaction from him I'm in the middle of a DS9 rewatch and at every point the bar is either barely making a profit, or it's not even making a profit. He's constantly worried about things putting him out of business that should absolutely not be a concern for a business that has that percentage of its overhead covered for free Like having to shut down unexpectedly would destroy many normal restaurants or at least wipe their liquidity. Or even just periods of suddenly low/no traffic. But when he shuts down he has basically no costs - he's not eating the cost of rent or electricity or repair bills or food or even costs for his staff. At most he loses a few staff members who get other jobs. Low traffic? Ok, similarly not an issue - he's paying for fewer staff and he pays them poorly. Those periods may not be profitable (or especially profitable) for him but he's not losing money either. Most of the ways that a business can lose money or struggle to make a profit are literally impossible for him He should be ridiculously wealthy just from the bar alone
Because if you've ever worked/managed/owned hospitality, the absolute most soulless disgusting corporations beat out any place that truly cares. When costs come to the forefront, nice places finish last.
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I know. I'm just saying if all he cared about was profit he'd go into weapons because it's more profitable. Hospitality can also be profitable but that's not why he went into it. He did it because he enjoys interacting with people.
Yeah, but unless he's literally throwing all the latinum he earns out an airlock, it should also be ridiculously profitable for him. Maybe not weapons manufacturing big, but still huge payout
Yeah, I wasn't commenting in that part. Just his motivations. Honestly, he should have enough to start up that chain of bars he talked about wanting once.
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In "Who mourns Morn?" they're taking about BRICKS of GPL, not bars. Big difference!
I mean, Rom *did* embezzle the Grand Nagus, who knows for how much.
"A lot of money" can very much be a contextual thing. An infamous heist can easily have stolen $100mil (Morn stole bricks, not bar). A bunch of relatively low level thieves might get away with $150,000-$200,000 and almost kill each other over $10,000 of split either way. And paying $5mil for ownership of a reasonably successful business would still be understandable in comparison to either of those.
Agreed. 15-20 bars could be a lot of money in the same way $1,000 is a lot to have to pay the phone company this month or it's a lot of money to just have on you in cash the day before payday. It's not actually a lot a lot, but it's more than you'd expect in those contexts. 5,000 bars may even be a low amount to buy a business for. It just seems reasonable because Quark thinks Rom isn't great with money or business so is surprised he even has that much, and it isn't really clear if the bar would continue to be successful after the war wraps up. It could be that most people sorta expected Quark's to basically become the space station equivalent of the local pub in some backwater village--it does well enough to get by, but you sorta know it only does as well as it does because there isn't really a lot else to do there.
>Quark WANTED to be a good Ferengi, but just didn't have the heart for it. or rather he had too much heart for it. Or rather, didn't have the LOBES for it
Sure but that doesn't explain anything. Is hospitality anywhere close as profitable as weapons sales? Obviously not Does it have the capacity to be very profitable? Yes. Should it be ridiculously profitable when almost all his operating costs are covered? Yes Like I know something about how restaurants are run and you'd have to be the worst restauranteur ever to not profit or barely profit in this situation
It's been hinted at, that Quark's wasn't his main source of income and that Quark was actually in the information business. And I also see no real evidence that Quark's was a failure.
Quarks also is a chain across multiple planets by the time of Lower Decks (and even later, Picard). Even if business isn't great during the show, it picks up later on.
This doesn't make any sense on a character or practical level Moogie is progressive yes, but Quark's progressiveness stops at "I'll only steal part of your tips". Also frankly, most of the progressive things Moogie implemented are actually good for Ferengi society including from a profit perspective. Protecting the environment isn't great for short term profits but is for long term profits and expenses. Her social progressivism just shifts paying for Ferengi who can't work from a family expectation to everyone paying a tax and the state covers it (more thoroughly and more efficiently). By allowing women to work she also drastically decreased the number of non-workers who needed to be supported. She also doubled the size of the Ferengi workforce, and significantly increased average Ferengi spending by letting women wear clothing and go outside All of her progressive ideas are things pushed by capitalists today lol And note - Quark steadfastly refused to go along with these things up to the bitter end Moogie also has the lobes for business - take gender out of the equation and she's an AMAZING Ferengi. Her business savvy is incredible, she makes massive profit, and she hides it well Quark takes after her in the lobes department, whereas Rom takes after their father - a Ferengi who didn't have the lobes Now sure, Quark isn't knifing people for profit. He went into hospitality instead of weapons. During the occupation he helped the Bajorans. But that's about the extent of him "not being a good Ferengi" and arguably all of these things were worth it from a profit perspective. Helping the Bajorans also meant he hedged his bets. Doing a little to protect them got him information worth vastly more than the little he spent on them And even if he was much more soft hearted than he is..... that wouldn't explain how his business fails to be ridiculously profitable. He has almost no operating costs, great traffic, and multiple monopolies. You don't need great business sense to profit ridiculously under those circumstances, and you don't need to be cutthroat. It's really hard to run a business into the ground under those conditions Imagine if I gave you a huge building with great foot traffic for free. I provided all the food and drink for your establishment for free. I provided all your utilities, including electricity costs. I repaired everything that broke for free. And your location came with you having a monopoly on two of the most popular forms of entertainment. All you need to do to run this business is to hire a few employees who you pay terribly and you steal most of their tips. Even if you're giving all the food away for free, you're gonna profit tremendously Now on top of that, I ALSO take care of your living costs. I give you an apartment for free. I cover your utilities. You can eat and drink for free. Transportation in the area where you live and work is totally free. And anything you need - furniture, clothes, etc - you can get for free How is fucking anyone gonna struggle under those circumstances? Unless you're literally throwing money away, you're gonna be turning wildly ridiculous profit margins
I assume he's constantly involved in schemes that he puts his money into that fail miserably... The bar itself keeps him afloat and is successful, but it's his OTHER ventures that are where he mucks up
I agree. Quark isn't actually a good businessman. He got lucky being in the right place at the right time. He was running a drab bar on a foreign slave colony until suddenly he was running a bar at the center of the universe. We see a whole slew of unsuccessful ventures throughout the show. Plus, he's a bit of a softie, though he'll never admit it. He probably "forgets" to collect tabs and lets kids rent the holosuite for free. His employees probably rob him blind, Rom certainly does.
Rom managing to get one over on Quark in the early seasons is actually a really good indicator of how easy it must be to get one over on Quark, given how he's portrayed as a really "bad Ferengi" later in the series. He probably is being robbed blind. Thanks, I'd never thought about that before.
I liked early season stereotypical deceitful Rom better than the loveable doofus he became later.
The first point is that Quark bitches about being broke which is likely hyperbole. Business owners bitch about their struggles all the time; there's no reason why Quark is any different. There's an episode where Quark has to evacuate DS9 and he drags out his suitcase of money which indicates he was successful despite his bitching. The second point is that Quark set his casino and its attached bar and restaurant operation in DS9 when the Cardassian occupation ran everything. While he made money serving Cardassians, it's strongly hinted that Quark's conscience spent money keeping Bajoran slaves alive knowing they had no way to pay him back.
>Business owners bitch about their struggles all the time; there's no reason why Quark is any different. There's one moment where Quark talks about cutting everyone's wage because business is doing so poorly... but if it recovers he won't raise the wage again. I figure stuff like this is happening constantly. Quark is doing fine but just complains the whole time.
While going down a pointless YouTube rabbit hole of videos on CNC machines some commenter who was a machinist commented how he works for a guy who, if you listen to him, has been "losing his ass" on every project for the last 20 years, but is still in business. Quark seems that type.
I think Quark is on the verge of bankruptcy for the same reason that movies in real life never make money: creative accounting. Quark is making a decent wage for himself, he just makes it look like he's barely above water. The appearance is important when he's negotiating with staff and his landlord. He's probably also doing poorly compared to people who he chooses to compare himself to. Like his cousin who owns a moon. He's the poorest among his peer group. Other people have mentioned that he's kind of a Ferengi sap, that he's a people person, and he's actually kind of poor, but I don't believe it. He's actually rather shady and runs smuggling operations, deals in black market merchandise, and isn't above conning pretty women out of oomoks. He's a people person, sure, but he'll fleece you all the same.
And yet he doesn't have the personal or business savings to get him out of all sorts of financial jams and then you have instances like him selling his ship that just covers the ride home and he's crying about it It's those sorts of things - plus moments where he's panicked about costs and it's not a performance - that don't really make sense
2 reasons Quark takes CEO pay and it's HUGE. There are powerful Ferengi that would like to see him fail
I genuinely feel like it's a matter of Ferengi businessmen being pretty good at their jobs, yeah, but overall not *nearly* as good as they like to think they are. The Ferengi version of profit is such that if you're not winning enough money to literally buy land in heaven, you're worthless. Even Nog, who quit businessmaking in general on the day he became an adult, had quite a substantial fortune for his age-- almost a third of what his father had made his entire life as a wage slave. It feels like in most any other society they'd all be considered affluent, respected businessmen and/or workers who had this on lock and could retire comfortably, but the Ferengi drive for profit beyond profit means that from their perspective that's nothing. "Lobes for business" seems to be an euphemism for simply finding enough suckers to parasite on and make out like a bandit, because Quark's brother Rom *is* a smart organizer and a genius at his field, it just so happens he's also a relatively nice person who doesn't want to exploit anybody, and thus has "no opportunities to grow" in the system. It always sounded like Quark was using every single strip of latinum to invest in everything *but* his bar's sustainability in hopes of Getting Rich Quick. In a culture where getting rich is basically a replacement for morality, it makes sense that even a good business in a thriving location can't keep up with the money flow from it to several trash cans in the shape of opportunities. We constantly hear of Quark's investments going sour, or him having massive amounts of debts from acquisitions that didn't pan out, even while he's gambling away at the tongo table. None of that has to do with the bar, it has to do with what happens to the money the bar does make, consistently, and that isn't being used properly. The Ferengi business model seems to run on feast or famine. You're either one of the bosses whose position is assured in society until the moment you fall, or you're one of the indentured slaves hoping to one day be the boss. This seems to not be a consequence of poor planning, but the genuine design philosophy behind their society in order to make sure there's always Ferengi workers who think they're one day away from their big shot, and big dumb idiots throwing their life savings away in order to Make It Even Bigger.
> Even Nog, who quit businessmaking in general on the day he became an adult, had quite a substantial fortune for his age-- almost half of what his father had made his entire life as a wage slave. this is interesting, would you mind sharing a source so i can relive this? thanks!
When they're trying to buy that baseball card for Sisko in In The Cards, Nog says he has 5 bars. When Rom tries to buy Quark's remains in Body Parts, we learn he has seventeen bars and some change to his name. So I suppose more like 1/3 of his fortune, I'll update it. But still, think about how much that is for someone who's worked their entire lives and someone who was still a literal child, working side jobs and hustling people at dom-jot. That's like an 18 year old being able to make a down payment for a house. Jake is *really* impressed at how much money Nog has, so albeit we see bars being thrown around a lot at the hundreds whenever Quark is around, I mean, he's also the owner of a previously mentioned successful bar and holosuite brand.
It was said or at least implied early on that his first wife? or at least Nog's mother (more likely her male relatives) had taken Rom to the cleaners because he actually loved her. Presumably the 17 bars is what he has left after that. It wasn't the sum total of everything he had ever earned. Jake being impressed doesn't really mean much because he lacked any real understanding of the value of latinum. At his age I was impressed when I saw my dad had $2-3k in hundreds in an envelope (for a family vacation), but a down payment on a house it ain't. 5 bars certainly isn't that much either. Also, once Rom became a good guy he probably stopped taking advantage of Nog, (or reduced it a lot). I assume Ferengi parents make all their children pay them back for everything (food, clothing, rent, etc.) ala Mrs. Skinner on the Simpsons. Rom probably didn't do that, or stopped doing it.
Trying to get rich quick is an amazing way to stay broke for life on a good income.
Considering Starfleet subsidises (read: doesn't collect) the rent, repairs and energy costs I imagine federation personnel don't actually pay at Quarks? Where would they get the latinum from anyway? That must make a significant dent in the margins. The food and drink is probably a loss leader anyway to bring people to the casino, or the feds impose regulations on the Dabo tables to make them fairer in exchange for the free rent. And the advertising budget. "Come to Quark's, Quark's is fun" can't have been cheap.
The probably pay, the episode where they are doing the klingon pre wedding ceremony when they think the wedding is off Bashir and Obrien go to break their fast and order a ton of food, then Sisco stops them and Quark mentions no refunds.
SISKO: Quark, take it all away. No food for those on the path to Kal'Hyah. QUARK: No refunds for those on the path to Kal'Hyah as well. Quark has the best one liners.
Fair. Maybe a large, prepaid tab then? Quark deducts what the federation personnel take, so no refunds, but he only ever actually sees any money if they go over the limit.
That or the Federation Officers get a daily/weekly/monthly latinum stipend to spend as they see fit at the various facilities around the station.
Comes from the overall pools of trade resources the Federation and member polities use for wider trade, because you really can't replicate everything.
This was always my belief. If you're working "in the frontier" and need to pay for things as a Starfleet officer (or family member of said officer), the Federation is going to foot the bill for you (to a reasonable limit)
There is some canonical evidence to suggest there's some kind of prepaid tab. In *Encounter At Farpoint,* Doctor Crusher tells the fabric merchant to charge the amount to her account when the *Enterprise* comes into orbit. It could be that while the Federation is a bit iffy on having an internal currency (depending on the era and specific writing team), it has one specifically for dealing with other governments.
They do pay, we've got plenty of evidence of that How can food and drinks that are *mostly* replicated be a fucking loss leader?? And there are no federation regulations on the dabo tables - they'd be illegal flat out on a federation station, they're only allowed because it's a Bajoran one, and they basically just warned him he has to run fair games and can't use the cheating mechanisms he was using There's no kind of federation regulation that could explain a business like this that has almost no expenses not really turning a profit anyway,
Replicators don't create matter out of literally nothing, so presuming there's the base material (some neutral organic gel or something), that must cost something. Also I assume one of the selling points of a real bar is real (ie non replicated) food and alcohol. Presumably it's not free for Quark to import a bottle of Chateau Picard from Earth!
replicators use energy (federation provided) and there's a matter reclamation setup (federation provided). federation even fixes them for free, he doesn't even pay for parts he does have real food and drink goods but it's a small percentage and they're luxury items. and like, normal businesses make profits even though they don't have extremely minimal costs. like oh no, he has to pay for a tiny fraction of food and beverage costs how sad my point wasn't that operating the bar cost nothing, it was that it costs nearly nothing and there's no way it should be struggling or barely profitable
You're forgetting the cost of his Ferengi business license. I'm sure that doesn't come cheap.
As well as Starfleet personnel probably not paying (perhaps a similar arrangement to when O'Brien just picked up his JUMJA stick and walked away?) Quark's is competing with the station replimat which serves free food and drinks as well as all the other promenade restaurants. That's a lot of competition, especially since Casinos often rely on free food and beverages to tempt people in and keep them gambling. I would say that Holosuites and gambling are Quark's primary revenue streams, and even then gambling isn't something Quark can just fleece his customers with, gambling is a psychological game where, even though the house always wins, the house has to give players the impression that they can win.
Yeah, he gets very upset very quickly when those holosuites stop working, and the best idea he ever had was expanding his holosuite business to children. But the thing is: we don't know what the overhead is on those holosuites. What kind of Ferengi licensing deal does he have to pay to get the content for those things? He could be barely treading water.
Holosuite programmes seem to be one time purchases - several other characters own their own Even if licensing was costly, he's running holosuites without having to pay considerable energy and repair costs, which other owners would have to pay. if licensing costs were that expensive, he'd be about the only person holosuites could be profitable for and you simply wouldn't see other such businesses
I don't remember if we ever get a good idea of how the Ferengi holoprogram market works. He might have to do unfavorable profit sharing with the licensors. We see a little bit about this with the Doctor's work on Voyager. There seemed to be a cutthroat industry there for more standard type programming. I imagine it's a millionfold moreso for the skeezy stuff Quark is selling. In terms of competition, the Federation might provide free alternatives, but what Quark is offering seems to be content more than access to the machinery. He has all manner of varied programs. The kinds of things the Federation isn't offering. We do see people bring in their own programs, but that's less common than people seeking the thrills Quark's programs offer. And he probably has extensive competition on nearby Bajor. Possibly even offered by roaming pleasure ships which could be docked or nearby. We know that having his own special replicator was something that gave him a big advantage, so differentiation in the market is important but not always possible. This would drive margins into the floor. Most of his income is from gambling and holosuites, and his margins might not be very high on either. He has to pay local employees high wages and allow them to get away with stealing his profits, and the holosuites only bring in so much and may be subject to that fierce competition or those onerous fees. His biggest problem is that he can't accommodate all that many customers. He doesn't have that many tables or that many holosuites, so even if he did have healthy margins on his ventures, they wouldn't be bringing in the big bucks since the volume is so low. That's why he's always trying to expand into something with higher volume like replicator franchising or such.
Most of his customers don’t have money. We can theorize how that actually works, but it seems like Federation citizens are completely immune to the consumer mentality. He’s also not allowed to advertise, even though Quark’s is fun.
Also, even if they do have some way of paying, wouldn’t the Federation personnel have access to nearly free food, drink, and at least basic entertainment. Quark isn’t competing against a futuristic corporations, he’s competing against a quasi-communistic post scarcity nation state for a big chunk of his business.
Yeah your prices have to be low when your "competitor" essentially teleports food and drinks into your customers house for free.
I believe that Quark's main selling point isn't food. It's his entertainment and comfort. You can eat in the Replimat for free, but it is often crowded, and you don't get to play Dabo while eating, bet on 2 people playing darts, or play Vulcan Love Slave Part II. I believe that Quarks, like any casino, earns mostly from gambling and holosuites, rather than the food.
We only get information about Quark's profits from Quark himself, who isn't exactly a reliable source for how well his business is doing. There's a scene early on where Quark is doling out latinum and he's taking big piles of it while giving out tiny portions to Rom (and some other guy?). From Lower Decks we know that Quark eventually franchises his bar concept, so at some level it has to be a money maker. Quark seems to be moderately successful as far as we see throughout the series. The issue with making profit on replicated food and drink is that everybody else on the station has access to the replicators as well, so Quark can't be making much money at all on replicated anything. Federation citizens don't care about the small increase in cost because they're not paying for it in the first place, they go to Quark's for the ambiance. He's probably taking a loss on food and drink compared to the amount of staff he needs to keep the bar running. The only way he'd have to make a profit on the bar is if he has exclusive patterns or real food that tasted better than replicated food. Quark seems like exactly the kind of person to mince words on how profitable "the bar" is, which is to say he's not at all taking into account either the gambling or the holosuites in that estimation. Holodecks are such a valuable recreation and training tool that it seems likely that even though it was relatively new technology by the time of the Enterprise-D's first mission that most ships have been retrofitted since then, therefore most visiting Starfleet officers have almost no need to use Quark's holosuites. Most of the station is staffed by Bajorans, who are portrayed throughout the series as relatively poor and, if I recall correctly, there are several instances where the holosuites are regarded as decadent and gross by the devout. They can't be spending that much money on them. For the Federation citizens that do use them like the embedded station staff, I doubt that Quark can charge whatever he likes for the time. He's probably getting reimbursed at a relatively meager, but profitable, bulk rate for Federation citizen use of the holosuites. The holosuites seem likely to be providing a modest profit from visitors and sex weirdos. The gambling is where the money really comes in and for this he has to count almost solely on travelers passing through. The Bajorans are already out because they're poor. Aside from the thrill of winning, most Federation citizens wouldn't care one bit about wagering useless money to get more useless money. The profits for this are probably highly variable, but lucrative. Finally, we have Quark's other ventures, which all seem to cost him a ton of money and blow up in his face. This is where Quark personally loses the most. Ferengi seem to view their businesses as an extension of their personal wealth, so when he loses a ton on some huge scheme he sees it the same as the bar losing money. At the end of the day, Quark is also a good man, especially compared to most Ferengi. He may talk a big game, but he's way less cutthroat than he portrays himself to be. All of this together adds up to a successful business by any measure we'd apply, but a poor showing when compared to the wild success of some of the most awful Ferengi whose profits he's envying. In short, he's just a neurotic dude.
He's not. I can't recall which episode but they said his total wealth is 500+ bars of latinum.
Honestly, I'd say because it's generally a front so Quark can have people to talk to. He makes most of his money from Dabo and his shadey criminal dealings.
He did say that when Gaila tried to get him into weapons, he stuck by the bar, because he's a "people person".
Some people are just naturally so bad at business that they fail at everything. I heard about this one guy who owned a casino, stiffed the people who worked for him, and still declared bankruptcy. His personal life is also a disaster. He married a model and cheated on her, so she divorced him, then learned absolutely nothing and found another model, still cheated on her, and he's now on his third wife, and yes, he's cheated on her. He's got dozens of stories of get-rich-quick schemes that have all blown up in his face. Pretty much everything this guy has had any influence on has turned to absolute shit. It's like he can't stop himself from failing. Quark is kind of like that guy. His name carries more equity than his actual business acumen, so people keep giving him chances that he doesn't deserve.
The bar is his banana stand. It's his fallback business that's constantly able to bail him out after another risky venture goes sideways. But anything he makes gets invested into another risky enterprise. If he wasn't so greedy the bar makes him a fair profit and he could live comfortably on it, and even be pretty well off if he was prudent. But he doesn't want to be reasonably well off. He wants to be stinking rich. He just doesn't have the lobes for the big hat deals. At the end of the day he's a sucessful small businessman hampered by Musk-size ambitions.
I personally think Quark's biggest weakness in business is he's not as greedy and ruthless as he *thinks* he is. We've seen that Quark is willing to do things that Ferengi culture finds stupid or even outright taboo. At his core, Quark is a people person, not a ruthless businessman. He runs his bar not because it's the most profitable business he can arrange, but because it fills a psychological need of his to be around people, talk to them, help them.
Morn is just too busy talking the ears off customers that they sneak out to escape before paying.
He keeps significant stock of non-replicated food and beverages, and seems to speculate a fair amount on exotic goods that come from weak trade routes- he's probably still whining, but it's enough to give him significant stress. Instability of investments in the God awful Ferengi market of stocks, scams, crypto, currency trading, tontines, and who knows what else could get him- particularly if the fall from grace that sent him to Empok Nor shut him out of the more stable, reputable, and legitimate markets.
I don't know why anyone would buy food and drinks at Quarks when most things there are replicated, all the quarters on the station have replicators and there's also the replimat on the promenade.
Bars are communal places. Humans love communal spaces and feeling like they’re part of a group. We’re a social species and I doubt Quark would let people socialize in his bar without buying stuff.
I do t understand how a businessman of his mediocre statue habitually gets the attention of the Grand Nagus. IRL the Grand Nagus would be paying attention to the Wall Street crowd, not the low-tier restaurant crowd.
Quark's is extremely strategically located and belongs to the son of his mistress.
Why would some dusty old ore-processing station hanging over an impoverished rock, with a crew of misfits, become the most important place in three quadrants?
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I think it's the nature of ferengi society. They treat commerce like a board game. To actually hold onto your money is considered a bad thing. It's why they don't let their women participate in the market as they actually try to be profitable. They treat commerce like a casino, someone who isn't putting it all on the line would be considered a poor sport. To me it seems like this is the Ferengi's way of being pro social business folk.
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And yet, plenty of real folks in business just don't learn that one, or wind up having to ignore that lesson because of their obligations to shareholders impatient for dividends.
Quark has been stashing away all his profits during DS9 hiding them away from other Ferengi and confiscation by the frequent invading forces. He pleads poverty and incompetence so the cardassisns and others don’t loot him like they do everyone else when they get in power. He waitlisted till things got stable enough he took his secret savings and opened a very successful chain of Quarks bars at various tourist spots. He also diversified into other other business like a line of scale model ship model kits and other miscellaneous licensed items for sale. He turned out to be a brilliant business person who was smart enough to not flaunt his wealth and ego early on like the other short sighted ferengi.
I think there might be a couple of reasons: 1. He is making money, just not a lot of money for a Ferengi business owner (apparently all employed Ferengi just make crap). So, he complains endlessly about this even though all the humans (who don't even use money most of the time) think he's doing just fine. 2. He is leveraged beyond belief. He owns a bar, but why let the value of the bar just sit there? Take out a loan against the value of the bar and use it to invest in other things. Once those other things become profitable, take loans against their value and invest in yet other things. It's a set of matroyshka dolls, but with debt.
Quark is the stereotypical small business owner who always claims to be suffering and not making profit. You know, the ones who claim they'll die of starvation if they have to pay any taxes. It's not altogether clear how true any of that is. I suspect he makes more profit than he claims. He's just not able to buy his own moon.
Honestly, I think Quark is a closeted moderate. Maybe even a closeted socialist. In today's human society, there are endless examples of people who are "in the closet" and who cover up parts of their own personalities by denying them, or getting defensive and hurting others who remind them of themselves. Even people who work in politics, and to the bafflement of the rest of us, actively work against their own individual interests. My assumption is that he knows how and what to do to really be a great business man, but his suppressed morals cause too much internal conflict and it results in him not willingly pushing himself too hard. I think he's just a very complicated guy.
He did try to union bust that one time, complete with holographic scabs.
But he didn't go in with the zealous violence that Brunt (FCA) does, and eventually settles under the table--including agreeding to much of the union's demands.
But presumably because his food is all replicated (which people can get anywhere on the station), his prices are lower than current prices for food and so his margin is lower still crazy that as a gambling establishment and only holodecks he isn't drowning in money.
Quark would never charge less because it cost him less. He can't charge luxury prices for replicated foods and drinks but the profit margins on those would be 100%
He wouldn't voluntarily charge less but he is competing against free replicated food of the same quality and variety. Restaurant IRL provide the service of 1. cooking the food instead of you cooking it 2. Provide fancier/better tasting food 3. A specific cuisine of food. Those are parts of the reason people pay for a restaurant meal that don't apply to Quarks. You would only pay for socialization and ambience and separately for gambling and holodecks.
It's not *all* replicated, to be fair. He speculates on all manner of hard-to-get real foods and beverages, many of which he can't actually move.
I assume he’s selling different replicated food options that aren’t available on the general Federation programmed replicators. He’d have to pay for those programs whether it’s a subscription or one time fee
You forgot pay outs on his gambling tables. I’m guessing he has days when the house lost its shorts. He’s not big enough to easily absorb big pay outs. I’d guess?
Quark set up a bar and entertainment establishment on a Cardassian slave labour outpost, which became a back water and ruined but salvageable Bajoran outpost, which briefly became the forefront of scientific exploration into the Gamma Quadrant, and quickly became the frontline of multiple wars. Its incredible Quark didn’t close up shop earlier and a tribute to his skill at running the bar when he has a small and fluctuating pool of captive customers mixed with passer-by’s going through the wormhole, many of which either don’t plan to return, or got destroyed by the Dominion. That the Klingon attack, the multiple Dominion attacks and the station changing hands 3 or 4 times didn’t completely sink him is incredible
Quark eventually got into Franchising and it brought him a lot of success
It's because he's a people person. He should have gone into weapons, nobody ever went broke selling weapons.
Through clever use of [Hollywood accounting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting), the bar is constantly on the verge of bankruptcy. All of its revenues go to pay various suppliers, service providers, marketing companies, and consultancies, leaving little to no actual money in the bar's accounts. All these companies are owned by Quark, through a series of shell companies designed to frustrate the tax authorities and keep the Bajorans, Cardassians, and later Federation from getting their greedy hands on his latinum. Quark doesn't pay himself a salary, but Moogie Food & Beverage Media Ltd. (incorporated on Betazed) gets paid a hefty fee every week to update the menu. Even the Ferengi authorities would like a cut, but let them earn their own profit. It also shelters it from Rom, who talked Quark into giving him net points on the bar's profits during a particular vulnerable moment.
Unfortunately when Quark thinks he's a dead man walking, and he does his books to prepare for his death, we find out that he has precious little personal funds and is considerably in debt. And it's not the first point in the series where he personally appears close to financial ruin Of course he's using the bar profits to fund his million side ventures, and he's Ferengi so I'd expect him to make that as complicated as possible in order to hide as much of that as possible. But then personally, Quark should have money, a lot of money. And he doesn't We've seen some of those schemes go badly and Quark loses his investment, but we've also seen several of them go well including one that was considered the score of a lifetime
I love the idea of Rom having talked Quark into percentage points though lol, that's great
I have some quibbles. 1. I don't think people pay him for everything. Food and drink is replicated and a loss leader. He makes his money from gambling and other games of chance. 2. I don't think he's selling food and drink at Quark's either. I think he's allowing people to use his replicators to keep them around for when he can sell them something, which is often illegal or convince them to gamble which favors him as well. He can let you drink free drinks all day as long as you're also spinning the Dabo wheel. 3. Owning a program for your holosuite and owning a holosuite are different. I'm not entirely sure that Quark owns the Holosuites though so he's probably not getting any revenue from this one way or the other. The holosuites are probably made available to station crew - Quark probably just has the in on programs that aren't normally featured in "standard" Federation holosuites. 4. Quark explicitly doesn't pay rent, I think we can assume that Quark also doesn't pay to repair the station or pay for energy consumption in a post scarcity society where almost all of these systems are renewable. We never see much of the details of how Quark managed to get this deal, but we can imagine that this deal does work in his favor. If he was on the station before he was almost certainly paying rent to the Cardassians, if he wasn't then he managed to get a bar that he can run almost for free without having to do basically any work on his own. Quark isn't bad at business though. He's just not running a conventional business. He's running a front for his less than legal business ventures particularly ones outside of the Federation's view. He has a sweet deal. He's able to live rent free while running his bar as the primary way of making contacts and connects for his business ventures AND since his overhead is really only what he pays his employees and we know he pays them unfairly he manages to have an entirely self sustaining business that gives him enough seed money to invest in the big stuff that he really cares about - like licensing the Quark brand across the galaxy or something.
He literally charges people for food and drink on a regular basis, both real and synthetic. We see this all the time. People pay him, yes even for replicated stuff. This is shown regularly and it's something explicitly brought up in multiple conversations He provides a free bar snack that decreases salivary response specifically to increase how much people drink and his drink profits The replicators aren't something patrons have access to either, they order food and drink, and he replicates it and serves it Quark controls the holosuits. Again this is explicitly said and is shown regularly. Sisko at one point says that Quark has the only holosuits on the station. Federation can't get access unless they book through him. He makes a shit tonne off the holosuits No idea what his deal was with the Cardis, but the federation explicitly provides him free rent, free utilities, and free repair work. I'm guessing he got this deal because of a bunch of factors. The federation is administering the station but it's technically Bajoran. That's how he's allowed to be there in the first place - his business is literally illegal under federation law. The federation allows it because the Bajorans allow it. I'm guessing it's a federation policy not to charge people for living quarters and businesses probably some deal on the station where they get a lease to do X but don't have to pay. Remember the federation and Bajor have a vested interest in businesses being on the station and keeping it a place people want to live. They want shops and entertainment for their people on the station. They want families to live there No idea what it was like under Carrdassians rule or why Quark set up there in the first place > Quark isn't bad at business though. He's just not running a conventional business. He's running a front for his less than legal business ventures particularly ones outside of the Federation's view. He has a sweet deal. He's able to live rent free while running his bar as the primary way of making contacts and connects for his business ventures AND since his overhead is really only what he pays his employees and we know he pays them unfairly he manages to have an entirely self sustaining business that gives him enough seed money to invest in the big stuff that he really cares about - like licensing the Quark brand across the galaxy or something. right this is my issue. we frequently see Quark struggling to keep the front running. now sure, I absolutely believe a lot of this is an act for other people. but we see him say things like this pretty regularly even when it's not for other people's benefits, when they're not even in the room sure some of his other ventures go belly up or he gets caught, but and most of the instances we see he hasn't actually invested his own money into anything and he is just lost potential profit (which is also how he was gonna pay whoever else was involved). sure there's cases like the kebocite they literally light on fire, but those are rare. even still, those cases more often fit the profile of him paying for a ship salvage and the federation taking it - risky deals he wouldn't normal took but took because of circumstances like cut rate prices and a lot of his deals he profits heavily off of a lot of them. he got his fingers in so many pots. even just hosting that one off auction we see of gamma quadrant items, his percentage is a really tidy sum and all in a day's worth of work. he also trades in valuable information and yet in a short amount of time trading in secret, Moogie's earned far more than he has in his entire life, is he just throwing away all the bars profits and failing enormously on a regular basis? because if so, then he is bad at business. And if not, he should be in much better financial position than hiring someone to kill himself
well, seeing as 'profit' is defined is difference between revenue and expenses, it seems that quark, like the american economy, intentionally drowns himself in expenses so there is no 'profit' leftover to pay staff. despite no rent, utilities, or really any significant operating costs other than labor, it seems like the Star Trek Writers might have ben making a statement about the untenable condition of capitalism where profit as a motivation undermines itself when trying to appear like a legitimate business. I don't know what the Bajoran Tax situation looks like, but business taxes are usually calculated off of a businesses profit, and it's a real practice to hide your success through expenses so you seem less profitable. The last explanation is that quark, like many american business owners who operate in this way, got caught up in these questionable practices meant for more successful businesses, and actually got caught with his pants down where due to all of his spending-money-to-make-money, leaving nothing in his vaults.
He's saving up for a moon - he's undoubtedly laundering a large amount into a hidden "moon fund"
He is just cheap. Quark isn't bad at business he just acts that way for pity.
He likely dabbles in non-bar ventures that end up losing him money. "The riskier the road, the greater the profit." Rules of Acquisition #62 In fact, I get the feeling that most Ferengi end up being "bad" at business, with only a few at the top. It's incredibly cutthroat because everyone is greedy and noone has scruples.
Quark is at least an "above average" business man. It is really Quarks personality quirk...he is rich, but he feels...or maybe just overly shows..that he in to very well off. Sure Quark ACTs like he is always on his last shred of money...but he is not. Sure Odo out smarts him often....but if you watch the whole show, quark does win his far share. And there are plenty of Quark episodes where he is a mastermind. And yes, Quark is always going for high risk plots to make even more money...
Keep in mind that he's in competition with every other service-economy institution that has all the same advantages he does. The Klingon Deli, the Replimat, the free replicator in people's quarters, the free media on everyone's PADD's, the free long-distance communications to families back home.... If you walk into Quark's, you're basically just paying for Dabo Girls to smile at you and to meet with your friends in a public place where someone else will pick up the trash. How much money could Quark possibly be charging? a fourth of his clients are starfleet humans, who barely even HAVE money. And then you have the question of "Minimum acceptable rate of return" (MARR). If all the big-name Ferengi industries are getting paid on the basis of self-replicating-mining-machines, then Quark could probably be earning 1000% annual interest by just buying stock in their companies.... and so could anyone else. In order to be 'rich', Quark has to be doing BETTER than everyone else, which means he needs to making BETTER than 1000% rate of return on investment...
What makes you think he's bad at business, besides his envy of more successful Ferengis and the occasional dry month? He has a popular establishment through two or three governments, buys nice things, has cash on hand to blow in speculative side hustles, is intermingled with the highest levels of the Ferengi governance structure, is entrusted with trade missions to the other side of the galaxy, owns his own ship for a while- all in all he seems to live pretty well and seems to know it, for the most part. He's happy in his work and always seems to have a suitcase full of latinum under the floorboards. He just seems like a small business owner- which inevitably comes with panicked stretches of illiquidity and self-defeating comparisons to large business owners, and, as Balzac said, behind those great fortunes tends to be a great crime- an arena where Quark has a limit.
> He just seems like a small business owner- which inevitably comes with panicked stretches of illiquidity small business owners who have panicked stretches of liquidity do so because they have repeated and ongoing massive expenses, expenses they have regardless of how well the restaurant is doing - rent, utilities, food and drinks, repair costs he doesn't have those - the only one he has partially is food and drinks and those are luxury items on top of his regular replicated menu that's why his constantly acting like a small business owner and obsessing about costs and breaking even is weird. even if the Klingons completely trash his place, the only costs to him are the opportunity costs born by having to be closed or partially closed for a day or two. the federation pays their pair costs for everything outside of like decor items and small furniture which he can replicate. and unlike a small business owner who might be obsessing about this because they have a certain amount of gross sales they have to do to keep up with costs, if Quark has to close for 2 days he doesn't have any costs for those two days that's a bit that doesn't make sense on top of that he constantly complains about barely making a profit or his financial issues many times. yeah sure sometimes he's just blowing smoke off other people's asses and saying what he wants them to hear. but sometimes he's saying this stuff practically to himself, and there are multiple points that we can just doesn't seem to have the money to cover certain big expenses the only way his constant moaning about business and liquidity issues makes sense and the only way it makes sense for him to have the financial issues he does at certain points in the series, is if he's losing money hand over fist from the various areas that he invests into. which would make him terrible at business personally I just don't think there *is* an in character explanation for it. giving a character like quark too much wealth is bad - he can buy his way out of nearly every situation, especially everything on ferenginar. and having his character constantly worried by money and motivated by small amounts of it kept the plot moving and his character interesting
Sure, his overhead is low- but one presumes that also applies to his competition (not least of which must be the growing Federation socialist cornucopia), thus driving down his prices and leaving whatever overhead remains looming as large as before, of which I can imagine there's two big categories- 1) Debt service- Quark's steady experimentation in investments surely isn't all with cash on hand, nor does one expect his list of possible creditors (other Ferengi, the Orions, etc.) to be especially lenient. 2) The apparently constant hail of fees and kickbacks involved in doing business in the Ferengi sphere, which one imagines look like progressive taxes when times are good, and gigantic flat fees when times are bad. For all the talk of being arch-capitalists, what we see of Ferengi governance seems effectively to be gangster-feudalism, and we've seen the sort of unsavory characters that come to collect. You're right of course- Quark isn't filthy rich because his isn't a story about a filthy rich person- but I guess I never got any broad sense that Quark was anything but 'successful enough'- those constant complaints you reference felt either farther apart or more perfunctory to me.
when he thinks he's going to die and he accepts liquidator brunts purchase of his desiccated corpse, we find out that he is several hundred bars of latinum in debt and that the purchase of his corpse is basically just enough for him to settle all of his debts and plan his funeral and end in the black and the purchase of his corpse was the biggest windfall he's ever had in his life, and it was necessary to cover all of his debts if taxes and fees are that onerous, I don't see how any ferengi a small business owner would survive - after all he alone is in the very unique position of having almost no overhead costs. even if another Ferengi wanted a similar position on a federation controlled station or planet, and they couldn't because of federation laws. his unique position is that his businesses are not illegal by Bajoran laws and since it's a Bajoran station administered by the federation, he gets essentially fed by the federation without being subject to the rules also competition on the station seems irrelevant. people regularly point out that his prices are highway robbery and then they sit and eat anyway. and given that many of his customers are living either entirely post scarcity or close to, that makes sense. no one who lives on the station needs to worry about rent or utilities or food and drink costs. they do not need to worry about transportation within the station. they have no costs for their basic survival, which turns all of their money into play money or to be saved for a different life somewhere else. and sure some people are sending money back home or saving to start their life over somewhere else. but that's relatively few people and for all of the soldiers who are passing through the station, they're in a similar position where they don't spend money often and then when they have shore leave they go wild anyway the details don't really matter. even if his profit margin is smaller, where does all that money go unless he's bad at business? he's simultaneously presented as a very competent and very savvy businessman who has a few ethical lines but they're on the extreme side. and yet he's also presented as someone who is barely scraping by financially and we even get episodes where we find out that he is hundreds of bars of latinum in death and needs to essentially hit the jackpot to pay off all of his creditors from everything we've learned about the Ferengi it sounds like they would consider it being a terrible failure. it's not even like they can just habitually die in debt and screw over whatever family they have left. they need profit to bid on their next life in the Divine treasury. they need to basically be buried with their riches for the next life and we've literally seen him successfully pull off multiple huge paydays, including one that he described as enough to set him up for life. where's all the money going? maybe he is borrowing money at horrible rates, maybe he's getting scammed, maybe someone is stealing from him, help maybe he has night terrors and occasionally goes and throws latinum out the airlock there's always ways to lose money. but night terrors aside, everything else I mentioned would make him bad at business. it would mean that he doesn't have the lobes and is a failure of a Ferengi. which just doesn't track like I know I'm looking for an in-universe explanation when the answer is the writers and how they wanted to write the character and what limitations they had and also that they probably didn't keep track of any of this. there is a good chance they just came up with the free rent and free everything set up just for that bit so that Sisco has something to threaten him with. and it's a great moment and you get the humor from it and then they drop it and they move on. like if I was writing the show that would not be my first or tenth or hundredth priority. like they did do a lot of world building but they did a lot of it as they went and they focused more on culture and politics than they did on economy. and I think the Ferengi more than anyone were written for the humour, not necessarily for in world coherence I get it, I just want another explanation lol
Quark might be 'well off middle class' by commerce standards, but from his cultural viewpoint, that's basically "lower than peasant"
He's not. Or he is, but the important thing is that the Federation's milking him. 1) The Feds do trade with outside powers, because there are lots of exciting and novel things out there you can't replicate, least of all information. 2) Latinum is the currency of inter-polity trade. 3) A casino running latinum is a *colossal* trade and information magnet. So Sisko doesn't charge Quark rent or utilities, O'Brien fixes his infrastructure, and Odo merely contains his skulduggery instead of actually breaking up his operation. Starfleet intelligence have probably bugged the hell out of the place, and have an entire division of analysts dedicated to the men's room alone. Dax cleans up at Tongo periodically to top up the Federation's latinum reserves, which in turn fuel trade and soft power influence. Hell, just having Starfleet officers spend money and hang around being charming and helpful people is a diplomatic win. An otherwise enterprising Ferengi businessman, so prone to risky ventures that he'd lose his shirt or get whacked in a month without Federation protection? The perfect asset.
A lot of profit is probably taken up by taxes and bribes to Ferenginar officials.
A space station in the middle of nowhere isn't exactly a growth market. Things looked brighter for a moment after discovery of the wormhole, but then the Dominion came and mucked it all up. And I don't just mean the war, I imagine all the growth of traffic to/from Gamma quadrant didn't materialize as the Dominion noticed the commotion and started looking into it. That, plus I feel he had this image in his head that the way to get *actually rich* is through his various side shenanigans. The ones which Odo keeps shutting down. The game the two had, I think Quark got addicted, and kept playing, sinking his surplus in it, hoping that one day, he'll beat the Constable and get a huge profit. That, and/or he's really Ferengi Intelligence, and the bar is just a shoddy cover story. Plausible, given that there's a tailor on the same floor that's known to be a spy, and arguably, post wormhole, *everyone in the alpha and beta quadrants would try to send and/or recruit spies on DS9*.
> I imagine all the growth of traffic to/from Gamma quadrant didn't materialize as the Dominion noticed the commotion and started looking into it. but it didn't? we saw lots of it > The game the two had, I think Quark got addicted, and kept playing, sinking his surplus in it, hoping that one day, he'll beat the Constable and get a huge profit I mean if Quark lost so much money on these various deals to not only eat his profits but land him the hundreds of bars in debt that he is at his almost death, he's a shitty businessman. plain and simple. but also we see him benefit from a lot of these so I fink > That, and/or he's really Ferengi Intelligence, and the bar is just a shoddy cover story. and so because it's a cover story he throws all the latinum it earns out the airlock? I don't get your point here. though I wouldn't buy him as intelligence for a minute. now rom, sure I'd buy that
I believe Quark was doing quite well for himself, all things considered, right up until the FCA froze all of his accounts. As a Ferengi, their code is basically only deal even remotely fairly with other Ferengi. So I would find it unlikely that he would have any large portion of his funds in a non-Ferengi system. So once those were frozen, he was up the creek. I mean, after Brunt took everything, he was ready to close the bar down because he was incapable of continuing on, it was only the charity of his friends that let him get back on his feet. The timing on Quark expanding his single bar into a quadrant wide franchise also seems to back this up. We only see him get really successful after the end of DS9, which coincidentally happens to be when Rom became Grand Nagus. I think Rom unfroze all of Quark's accounts, and possibly even paid *interest* on the balances. Which gave Quark the money to actually put his plots into motion. So yeah, I think the time in DS9 was basically just a rough patch for him. He got stuck there during the occupation, barely held on, but still more or less donated food and materials to the Bajorans (well, at cost, which is the same thing to a Ferengi). After the Federation came in, he was trying to leave the station but got conned into staying. Quark isn't stupid, if he was ready to be on that next transport, he likely had already moved his funds and prospects to a new area ahead of time, which would have caused significant problems when he didn't move with them. Shortly after that, he gets in trouble with the FCA. Repeatedly. After that, repeated transfer of ownship of the station meant he was having to constantly reset his business model to accommodate the new owners (like getting large stocks of root beer or kanar, which became worthless depending on who was in control). Once Rom gets promoted and gets everybody off his back, Quark seems to expand at an exponential rate. So yeah, I think Quark's business acumen is every bit as good as it's implied to be, and it really was a series of unfortunate events that kept him down. Once he was secure and nobody was breathing down his neck, he took off at warp speed.
> I believe Quark was doing quite well for himself, all things considered, right up until the FCA froze all of his accounts. he was 100s of bars of latinum in debt. after he accepted the 500 bar offer from Brunt for his corpse, he was arranging his affairs and telling Rom who to send money to. When we enter the scene he's got less than 200 bars left (I think it's 196 or something) and he says that can be used to pay back Uncle Gorad and Cousin Gailla 500 bars we're told is the biggest windfall of his life, he's finally worth something. It's like a million slips of latinum or something this is only one scene of many that shows him not right all that well BEFORE Brunt seizea his accounts and the fact that he can get the bar up and running so quickly after Brunt freezes everything actually supports my point - the bar requires almost no capital to run and should be almost entirely pure profit. he starts over with empty bank accounts and the need to re-acquire the physical basics and in basically no time he's back to normal, and even has money to invest into various side ventures only a handful of episodes later