simply a gimmick to get more people into the bar on a quiet night.
[quote]thosebananas wrote:
simply a gimmick to get more people into the bar on a quiet night.
[/quote]
Have a thong contest, winner gets free bartab. Easy and everyone wins.
[quote]thrasher wrote:
thosebananas wrote:
simply a gimmick to get more people into the bar on a quiet night.
Have a thong contest, winner gets free bartab. Easy and everyone wins.[/quote]
Not me…my ass is too hairy.
State Street Brats in Madison, WI does the exactly what the OP mentioned…And lots of people go there.
[quote]thosebananas wrote:
Hypothetically of couse 
If a bar put on a night where the price of drinks changed depending on the amount of each drink being bought…
[/quote]
Bar owners typically stock their bar based on the assumptions they have about their customers preferences precisely because consumers don’t like changing prices. I can’t see a bar staying in business if it were to mess with it’s prices constantly.
Consumers like price stability. The fact that you post asking this question is proof enough.
And to answer your question: I would probably not go.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
thosebananas wrote:
Hypothetically of couse
If a bar put on a night where the price of drinks changed depending on the amount of each drink being bought…
Bar owners typically stock their bar based on the assumptions they have about their customers preferences precisely because consumers don’t like changing prices. I can’t see a bar staying in business if it were to mess with it’s prices constantly.
Consumers like price stability. The fact that you post asking this question is proof enough.
And to answer your question: I would probably not go.[/quote]
This idea is not for an actual bar.
it is for a “special” night that the bar would put on or an outside promoter would come in and do… once in a blue moon type of thing.
i think the novelty of it would get a lot of people. especially with the current interests in the economy anyway.
but the only benefit to going would be to get cheap booze and when they didn’t get it they would be upset. Not to mention when someone didn’t get the lower price they would think you were cheating them.
Here in Minneapolis what I see some bar owners do is offer their overstock/leftovers dirt cheap…like $1/drink. The catch is the customer doesn’t know what he’s getting other than “alcohol”.
What you’re proposing is the exact opposite. I order what I want but ultimately don’t know what it’s going to cost me.
no, because when im drunk the last things i want to do are math, science, or economics - regardless of how much of an expert i claim to be at either while intoxicated.
OK, I have been to a bar that did this about 10 years ago in Manchester, can’t for the life of me remember the name.
They actually had like a stock market ticker that showed the current prices. People would dress up in ‘stock broker’ style.
Every hr they would have a market crash and certain drinks would go silly cheap, of course, everyone then rushes to the bar and orders driving the price up for the people further back in the queue.
This has to be a pay as you go bar, you can’t do it as a tab (but that would be normal for Scotland anyway.)
Get all the bar staff dressed in 80s stock broker braces and stripy shirts. Play 80s music. Everyone will have a great night!
Remember he is talking about a student union so A) everyone loves a gimmick and B) people will love ordering random obscure drinks just to try and get a cheap drink.
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
OK, I have been to a bar that did this about 10 years ago in Manchester, can’t for the life of me remember the name.
They actually had like a stock market ticker that showed the current prices. People would dress up in ‘stock broker’ style.
Every hr they would have a market crash and certain drinks would go silly cheap, of course, everyone then rushes to the bar and orders driving the price up for the people further back in the queue.
This has to be a pay as you go bar, you can’t do it as a tab (but that would be normal for Scotland anyway.)
Get all the bar staff dressed in 80s stock broker braces and stripy shirts. Play 80s music. Everyone will have a great night!
Remember he is talking about a student union so A) everyone loves a gimmick and B) people will love ordering random obscure drinks just to try and get a cheap drink.[/quote]
perscisly my sentiments.
minus the 80’s theme… there will be banging beats from a few local up and coming DJs
[quote]thosebananas wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
OK, I have been to a bar that did this about 10 years ago in Manchester, can’t for the life of me remember the name.
They actually had like a stock market ticker that showed the current prices. People would dress up in ‘stock broker’ style.
Every hr they would have a market crash and certain drinks would go silly cheap, of course, everyone then rushes to the bar and orders driving the price up for the people further back in the queue.
This has to be a pay as you go bar, you can’t do it as a tab (but that would be normal for Scotland anyway.)
Get all the bar staff dressed in 80s stock broker braces and stripy shirts. Play 80s music. Everyone will have a great night!
Remember he is talking about a student union so A) everyone loves a gimmick and B) people will love ordering random obscure drinks just to try and get a cheap drink.
perscisly my sentiments.
minus the 80’s theme… there will be banging beats from a few local up and coming DJs[/quote]
I guess I am just old!
[quote]thosebananas wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
thosebananas wrote:
Hypothetically of couse
If a bar put on a night where the price of drinks changed depending on the amount of each drink being bought…
Bar owners typically stock their bar based on the assumptions they have about their customers preferences precisely because consumers don’t like changing prices. I can’t see a bar staying in business if it were to mess with it’s prices constantly.
Consumers like price stability. The fact that you post asking this question is proof enough.
And to answer your question: I would probably not go.
This idea is not for an actual bar.
it is for a “special” night that the bar would put on or an outside promoter would come in and do… once in a blue moon type of thing.
i think the novelty of it would get a lot of people. especially with the current interests in the economy anyway.
[/quote]
As a bartender anytime there is a promotion where we have to keep track of how much of a single type of alcohol we are selling is a little irritating, this would drive me nuts and i would certainly have to be sober to pay attention to all the constant price changes etc. Sober bartending is never fun here.
u cant remember a single number in your head?
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
This has to be a pay as you go bar, you can’t do it as a tab…
[/quote]
How uncivilized.
[quote]thosebananas wrote:
u cant remember a single number in your head?[/quote]
I worked at college bars and we’d be at capacity every busy night; when you are slammed with a bunch of drunks hollering at you the last thing you want to think about is how much of what you’ve been pouring.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t work in a different setting; just throwing in my opinion as far as my experience goes.
My Student Union bar used to do this every Sunday night several years back.
The price of each drink in the market was shown in several tv around the bar and I think the prices changed every 5 to 10 minutes so you had enough time to go the bar knowing roughly how much you would have to pay.
A few times an hour a unpopular drink would crash and this would be shown on the screens and a wailing siren, followed by a mad rush to the bar.
In regards to how you would actually implement this from a technical point of view, I think its a bit more of a challenge than it seems on the surface.
Some things to think about:
*The tills used would have to be the modern touch screen variety so that the prices can be pulled from a central database, this way all the bartenders have to do is select a drink on the till and the quantity and the system automagically keeps track of the cost per unit.
(Most new pubs and clubs use these now anyway as its a lot easier to train short term staff, i.e students, without them fucking up when it comes to promotions and the like and they provide better stock tracking than the old manual entry tills, so its not that much of a problem really).
*If you wanted to use an MC and a chalkboard then I’m thinking you would need a longer window between price changes, something like 15+ minutes. Especially if your prices are worked out manually, then the announcement is made and the prices are written down the 10minutes can pass quite quickly, obviously with the time taken to do all this proportional to the amount of drinks that are in the market.
Personally I would use computers/TV’s to display the prices (but I am a comp-sci student so I’m biased =P)
*Your price calculation software would have to somehow link in to the Till/Stock system so it can track sales and then modify the price dynamically (unless you want to sit behind the bar logging all drinks sold and then calculating the new price every 5 to 10 minutes!). I’m pretty sure that these systems would be propitiatory and closed sourced making it difficult to get your software to sit on top unless they provide an API for you access.
*It would be wise to have a few drinks selections as a back up choice, so that if any drinks stock reaches zero, one of the back up choices can enter the market in its place rather than providing customers with one less choice.
*In regards to stock control the first few events would be a nightmare in trying to guess how much stock to order, but if the sales data is collected and stored it would be possible to work out how much of each drink was sold on average and provide you with decent margins of error. This data should get more accurate as the number of events increased.
Any ways those are my thoughts on the subject. It is a good idea, albeit not a new one, and I always enjoyed going to them when they ran.
Best of luck of with the idea and I hope you get it off the ground.
-Ph03nix
I’d happily do shots of gin all night. Regardless of price you know people are still gonna go for the jager bombs.
They did that at my former Uni’s pub, we always ended up with 1 bucks vodka shots :D.