It sounds like the perfect club is a golf club with a solid course, no outside catering or golf functions, a reasonable initiation fee, moderate dues, no food and beverage minimum, an option to walk or ride with or without a caddie, and a restaurant that serves a good sandwich and a beer or whisky.
Interesting comments on the food and beverage minimums. I belonged to a club in Philadelphia that had a simple but great old clubhouse. Club leaders (all of whom are now dead or departed from the club) thought that a new modern facility with a big catering facility was the path to success. The club now has to have an outing almost every week and books events like a catering hall just to cover the staff costs and building maintenance. Give me a golf club with a small building that doesn't have outings every day!
I have, for years, described that as "Country Club Disease."
My experience in Minnesota, South Dakota, Kansas and Arizona is that a too-large segment of country club boards get it in their head that F&B is a path to success and glory in the golf business.
My home club, the one I gre up at, my mother's club, another one here in Topeka, and a few more I have am familiar with have borrowed wagonloads of money to build or remodel their clubhouse and either never recovered from it or have had to deal with it as an anchor for years afterward.
My club borrowed something like $1.3 million more than 20 years ago and still owed almost a million when the bank foreclosed last April.
As recently as two years ago we had people in decision-making positions who believed that the F&B operation was subsidizing the golf course. Their justification was that F&B brought in $$ while the golf course budget showed only red ink.... FWIW, we were like a lot of clubs in that the balance sheet showed all dues going into admin budget, and F&B's only costs were materials and labor. So Admin and F&B might have a black bottom line, the golf course showed hundreds of thousands in red ink.
Where I grew up they built a fairly modest clubhouse to replace the old farmhouse that was on the property and were only saved when a couple of millionaires organized an effort to bail them out.
Where my mother is now only clubhouse member, the clubhouse was remodeled at a cost millions something like 8-10 years ago (she was still paying the assessment when she downgraded to clubhouse member a couple of years ago.) And she just told me that they are talking about another major remodel...
Meanwhile they went from a entry waiting list in the 80s when she and my dad joined, to a situation where she had to take a deeply discounted offer on her stock because the club was already sitting on several shares. The alternative would have been to get on a waiting list transfer her stock, and pay dues until her number came up.
K