cuetime said:
[...]
Unless your tables are fully booked, giving a significant break to a group doesn't cost you anything. [...]
Let's suppose the following
(1) you have significant drive-by traffic and visible sign on which you can change lettering
(2) Your tables are, say, half rented and half empty on Wednesday nights.
(3) You have the ability to get other income from patrons, e.g., from alcohol.
Every Wednesday you put a category of person on the sign, and a person of that category gets free time. "Wearing Blue Jeans" probably isn't a good choice because you'd be dipping into the patrons that are filling up the first half of the tables--the paying customers. "Nurse" might be a good category. Or "Teacher" might be. Or "ACME employee" might me. They would have to demonstrate with an ID. Maybe a Nurse driving by might even call a few nurse friends to let them know of the new-found freebee.
Here's the question for discussion. Is cuetime's above assertion really true? Is this really a win-win situation?
The airlines struggle with the same question. If they keep sending half empty planes on a certain route, it seems they'd benefit by offering the empty seats for $50 or even $20. And we know thay don't tend to do that.
I suspect the reason they don't tend to do it is that they fear the $50 fares would not really be extra income, that the existence of these cheap fares would in the future impact the full-fare group.
There's a study on monkeys where they give monkeys a cucumber slice when they complete certain tasks. [
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0917_030917_monkeyfairness.html]
They're perfectly fine with this until they see other monkeys getting a grape (which tastes better) for completing the same tasks. Then the original monkeys when offered a cucumber slice tell the researchers exactly where they can put those cucumber slices.....
Well, you get the idea.
Is the "fill up the empty tables with nonpaying or marginally paying customers" idea a good idea or a bad idea?
thoughts from room owners?
