BMC conspiracy?

[EmptyH]

Yesterday the company I work for had one of its after-work outings. Once a quarter the company sponsors a get together somewhere everyone can talk, play games, and drink. This outing was at a bar called GameWorks (arcade games, darts, assorted other fun stuff). The company provided everyone with 2 drink tickets, which I thought was really cool.

I get up to the bar and ask what they have on tap. They actually had 3 wheat beers(and assorted other Micro-Brews), which I found suprising. Since I currently have a wheat beer that I brewed a couple of weeks ago aging I thought I would have some for comparison (purely scientific you understand ) I ask the waitress about it and she brings me three small samples (again I am suprised, I may have to start comming here more often) They had a 312 Urban Wheat from Goose Island, a seasonal Wheat from Anhieser-Bush (?) and another one (for the life of me I can't remember who made it) that the waitress says tastes like Fuity Pebbles. I sample all three, and the waitress was right the one did taste just like Fuity Pebbles serial So I decide to go with the 312, very nice, sweet and easy drinking. I hand her my ticket and she give me a beer.

I must have got there right before shift change because the waitress leaves shortly after I got my beer. More people from my company start showing up and they get their tickets and start ordering drinks. I overheard the new waitress tell a couple of people "Oh, sorry you can't get any of the Micro-Brews with the tickets. It has to be Bud, Miller, or a mixed drink", so most people just ended up getting Bud or Miller. I didn't say anything about how the previous waitress gave me mine, because I didn't want her to get in trouble, but I thought it was odd that you could get a mixed drink but not a micro-brew with the ticket.

After I finish my beer I had one ticket left and didn't want to drink Bud or Miller, and I was driving so going with the "hard stuff" wasn't a good idea. So I go up to the bar, I have my ticket in one hand and my wallet in the other and ask "How much extra for a 312 using the ticket" I figured, ok mircro-brew is more expensive I can respect that, I'll just kick in the difference. She calls the head bartender over and asks him and he says that I can't use the ticket for a micro-brew, even if I am willing to make up the difference.

At this point I am a bit ticked, but being a company outing and since I was there to relax and have some fun I decided not to press the issue. I looked to a co-worker of mine standing next to me who like Miller and gave him the ticket and ask the waitress how much it would be just to buy a 312. She said it was $2.50, which really is a good price so I buy one and wonder back to the group.

It just frustrates me because a lot of the people I work with were interested in trying something different, but for some reason were told they had to go with pond water instead. Its not like the bar was giving us free drinks. The company purchased these tickets, in addition to quite a bit of food and game tokens, so I don't see why the bar would put arbitrary restictions like this. Besides most mixed drinks are more then $2.50 anyway. So what gives?????

</rant>

 

[mot]

Yeah thats sounds wierd man, We have had a few of these outing with the company I work for to. And actually was was at Gameworks here in MN about a year ago to! Anyways we didnt have any problem getting certain beer or liqour. Like you said the company pays for them and should be able to get almost anything.

When we had our I was getting some nice top shelf scotch and whiskey with my tickets, and some pricey beers to. I remember we found a smaller bar in the back corner by the bowling alley in the gameworks and the bartender was leaving all his drink tickets right on top of the bar, when he turned around to make a drink we had a hay day!

 

[Cheesefood]

312 costs considerably more than BMC. It's usually about $2.00 per drink difference. Plus, a lot of companies choose BMC because the low ABV means less liability from drunk drivers.

Glad you like 312. It's my fave from GI. I have a Gameworks within walking distance from my house.

 

[Orpheus]

Yeah that's what I was going to say, it's all about the cost.

I'm sure if you asked for some top shelf liquor for your 'mixed drink' you would've gotten the same response. Sad fact of life, unfortunately.

 

[kornkob]

*shrug* Sounds like the 'day shift' wasn't really up to speed on what the tickets were good for, so you got somethign above and beyond what you should have to start with.

As far as that goes-- it is what it is: they sold a bunch of tickets (probably at a steep discount to your company) and the day shift missed the message on what they were good for. Can't hardly fault them for the fact that your company wouldn't pony up for the premium stuff-- I am certain that the bar would be happy to quote a price for the same tickets, with a top shelf limit, instead of the rail. When I was a bar manager I would have bene happy to.

As far as the later reaction, that's probably an example of a bartender or shift supervisior enforcing a policy of not converting those tickets into any kind of cash value. It can be tricky for a business to imply that those party coupons have cash value by letting you buy higher end stuff with them and a little cash. By doing that they then have established the value (lesse-- that 319 was $3 and he let me have one with this ticket when I gave him an extra dollar-- you do the math).

Once you've given that a value (and setting any potential legal or tax issues that might crop up-- i think there might be some booze tax issue with that, in fact) jsut the hassle of having to deal with people wheeling and dealing using those tickets could get rough. Like: We've established that this ticket is worth $2. Since a pitcher of bud costs $6 that means I can get a pitcher of beer for 3 tickets, right? It only escalates from there. Frequently I found that a group of people will rapidly begin trying to compete to see who can get the 'best value' using tickets they've acquired from other people at the party. (the 'best value' measured in alcohol content is usually a hand poured Long Island, btw)

 

[EmptyH]

kornkob- thanks for the explaination, that actually makes a lot of sense. Like I said in my original post, I didn't make a big deal of it at the bar because I was there to relax and have fun, but it did strike me as strange. I can definately see why assigning a monitary value to the tickets could cause issues. --thanks

 

[dblvsn]

I get up to the bar and ask what they have on tap. They actually had 3 wheat beers(and assorted other Micro-Brews), which I found suprising. Since I currently have a wheat beer that I brewed a couple of weeks ago aging I thought I would have some for comparison (purely scientific you understand ) I ask the waitress about it and she brings me three small samples (again I am suprised, I may have to start comming here more often) They had a 312 Urban Wheat from Goose Island, a seasonal Wheat from Anhieser-Bush (?) and another one (for the life of me I can't remember who made it) that the waitress says tastes like Fuity Pebbles. I sample all three, and the waitress was right the one did taste just like Fuity Pebbles serial So I decide to go with the 312, very nice, sweet and easy drinking. I hand her my ticket and she give me a beer.
</rant>

The Fruity Pebbles beer you speak of didn't happen to be Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat did it? I bought a 6 pack of that awhile back and found it tough to drink a beer that tastes like (I thought) Fruit Loops. Checked that one off my list.

 

[TheJadedDog]

We had something similar at my last company Christmas party. Every year we get drink tickets that are good for beer or wine. This year the place we went said that it was only good for bottled beer, not draft, sucked. I can kind of see how you'd be getting more beer if you got draft, but they could always just pour you 12oz instead of 16.

 

[Cheesefood]

EmptyH just needs to come to grips that his manager doesn't think he's worth a $4.00 beer. Sometimes it's just hard to admit that, in the liquor store of life, you're Budweiser Draught and he's Johnny Walker Blue.

It's OK EmptyH, there are a lot of Budweiser folks out there. I'm not one of them, but I've heard they're there.

 

[kornkob]

We had something similar at my last company Christmas party. Every year we get drink tickets that are good for beer or wine. This year the place we went said that it was only good for bottled beer, not draft, sucked. I can kind of see how you'd be getting more beer if you got draft, but they could always just pour you 12oz instead of 16.

That doesn't even make sense unless they only have super premium beers on tap. Maybe somehow things have changed but when I worked the other side of the bar, after spilliage (which includes breakage and pilfering), it was far cheaper to give away tap beer-- by almost double IIRC--- than bottled.

Maybe they were using your party to flush old beer out of stock or they were short on kegs going into a heavy weekend (getting more kegged beer in out of rotation can sometimes cost you extra, especially if it is an 'event weekend' in town).

I can't recall the exact formula we used to set the price of party drink tickets for a party but I know that if you got tap beer with it, we actualy made a profit. What we aimed for was breaking even (booze+overhead+labor) on each ticket, possibly with a loss leader percentage, if it helped sales close the deal on a 'bigger' party package.

We never sold drink tickets outside a party package although I tried to talk them into it-- I even suggested having them printed on paper in water based ink but they were that afriad of the 'drink chit haggle' there.

/edit One more thing I wanted to add. Figuring out policy for a barcan be a real PITA because you want to do something that is cool but then you have to go back over it looking for legal issues (normal), make sure you are still going to make a profit (normal) and follow that with a sanity check for gotchas (normal). But then you have to do a special 'drunk check' looking not only for ease of use issues but for 'drunks trying to get one over on the bar and not understanding that their stupid booze soaked logic is not, in fact, logic at all' issues.

And, honestly, it's not the drunk drunks tha tmake this a real pisser. It's the 'I've had a couple of beers, ain't really drunk yet but now I think I'm smarter than the beer jockey' drunk that's the problem. He's still sober enough to be reasonable but has just enough slipjuice in him to be missing the occasional logical step. Unfortunately he makes just enough sense to fool the rabble into thinking that the bartender is a) trying to rip him off or b) is an ass.

 

[EmptyH]

EmptyH just needs to come to grips that his manager doesn't think he's worth a $4.00 beer. Sometimes it's just hard to admit that, in the liquor store of life, you're Budweiser Draught and he's Johnny Walker Blue.

It's OK EmptyH, there are a lot of Budweiser folks out there. I'm not one of them, but I've heard they're there.

Story of my life. I keep trying to get moved up to the top shelf but they just keep sticking me with the 1/2 price discount label.

 

[homebrewer_99]

I think your company just bought everyone off cheap...

 

[sconnie]

i know this isn't the point of the post, but the "fruity pebbles" beer was probably Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat. It's a strange lager version of a belgian wit that's spiced with orange peel and blueberries. It's pretty common around here and i've heard a lot of people compare it to fruity pebbles. Also, i remember hearing that they had just expanded that beer to a bunch of new markets.

 

[Bernie Brewer]

Yup I'd agree the Fuity Pebbles beer was proly Leinie's Sunset. Not their best effort...........

BTW our Christmas party this year was at a brewpub.........

 

[Torchiest]

kornkob- thanks for the explaination, that actually makes a lot of sense. Like I said in my original post, I didn't make a big deal of it at the bar because I was there to relax and have fun, but it did strike me as strange. I can definately see why assigning a monitary value to the tickets could cause issues. --thanks

I'm a bar manager, and if it had been me, I probably would've made you pay the difference, and then the next time someone got a BMC, I would've taken their money plus yours and rang up and paid for the expensive beer, then redeemed the ticket for the BMC.

I've worked many times when we've had big parties like that with drink tickets, and it's frustrating because there is almost always a communication failure. Either the staff or the customers (or both!) haven't had it explained to them what the tickets can be redeemed for, so irritation and confusion often result.

 

[EmptyH]

Yup I'd agree the Fuity Pebbles beer was proly Leinie's Sunset. Not their best effort...........

BTW our Christmas party this year was at a brewpub.........

Now that you guys mention it I think it was Leinenkugel. It was... different. I just don't want my beer to taste like a sugary kids cereal, I would constantly be looking at the bottom of the glass to see if I could find the toy prize