Wow. After looking back on the posts for the week I realize that I'm a real complainer. I guess Restaurant Week is getting harder for me to rationalize. In my eyes, there are many different categories of restaurants and they all serve their purpose. When you think of going out to breakfast, your choices can range from greasy spoon to elegant. All are delicious and all are needed. I love a greasy spoon breakfast...once in a while. Everything is cooked on the same flattop, getting more and more seasoned with each serving. It's satisfying in a comforting and greasy sort of way. I also love an elegant breakfast; something about a nice glass of champagne with a hand-picked dungeness crab benedict is just beautiful and satisfying in a completely different way. In both cases I feel I get what I pay for. Those are the key words, "I get what I pay for." On a regular night we believe our customers leave saying "I got what I paid for." Restaurant Week twists this dynamic a bit. We so happen to be an "elegant" restaurant; our food is extremely time consuming to make, made from fresh and costly local ingredients plus it takes a large amount of manpower to prepare. Unfortunatly, this means the deal of Restaurant Week represents something different to us.
Restaurant Weeks have become a normalcy in major cities across the US and for good reason. They promote tourism, they spur new customers and they serve as a sort of customer appreciation. In most larger cities they also benefit some excellent charities. Having lived in some cities that have hosted some pretty amazing restaurant weeks, I can say I am a huge advocate. Unfortunately, I think that our RW has a few flaws and those flaws affect businesses like mine more so than others. I have a major case of "love-hate" with Northampton's Restaurant Week and here is why.
While some restaurants stand to gain a large profit from the publicity and influx in business, we use it more as a marketing opportunity and as a customer appreciation week. Many restaurants "lessen" their menus to make even more money during the week. We don't. Our mark-up (on both wine and food) is far, far below the normal mark-up for restaurants. Most restaurants run a food cost around 20%, ours is closer to 40%. That means that if restaurant X is serving a dish that costs them $3.00 they are charging you $15.00. We would only be charging $7.50. Sure our prices are higher than most, but the deal you are getting is far better in terms of quality. This works for us (and the customer) during a normal business day but on a week like this one, especially when we don't compromise our cuisine and have to staff well above normal, we are literally making pennies on the dollar. This is not to say that we don't simplify our menu. We have to in order to not lose money during the week and to allow our kitchen staff to serve three times our usual number of customers. Now fold that in with the heightened criticism we tend to take during this week by people who are coming in without the understanding they are getting a deal. Add in the repeat customers who know they are getting the best deal in town, the large number of regulars that just happen to come in and the tourists who had no idea that RW was going on and you might understand my angst.
We have tried swaying the RW board to understand our situation. We have tried to get them to change the date to a week that has far less tourists, like August. No dice. When we suggested separate price points, they listened and changed them to include the restaurants that are priced too low to take part in RW by being able to offer a "2 for 1" offer. We have asked them to raise the price, perhaps to $25 a head. This year they made a big stink about raising the price. They raised it 89 cents from $20.11 to $21. Hardly helpful to us, or anyone else.
There is nothing I love more than being balls to the wall busy and running a crazy restaurant. I get a high from it and everyone who works in the business will tell you the same. If everything goes right, all the staff flow together as one restaurant. I love that. The problem is that the high may not be enough anymore for RW. We didn't see enough new customers this year so the "marketing" aspect may not be there anymore. We definitely saw a large number of regulars, but we would rather run our own "customer appreciation week" during a week that has less tourists running around. While there is a chance that we may take part in RW next year, I don't think it is likely. Maybe the board will listen to our suggested changes, but it seems unlikely they will mess with something that works well for so many others. It was an awesome restaurant week, easily our best one yet. We had our rough nights, and we had our smooth ones. I hear it's good to go out on a high note...
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