Resturant rip-offs

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Rag1

Executive Chef
Joined
Jun 24, 2007
Messages
3,022
Location
Berks Cty, Pa.
Went to a local Yuppie restaurant last week with the Queen. We each had a salad (a lame one at that) and a glass of draft beer. The bill came to $45.00 plus tip. Holy crap !!
Then my son tells me he ate with a group at Olive Garden and one of the party ordered a whiskey. They charged him $2.00 for ice in the drink.
And these places whine about business dropping off.
 
Greg Rempe said:
I doubt that the Olive Garden charged for ice in the drink.

Either way I cant stand Olive Garden.........Actually I cant stand any Italian food thats not home made, and i'm not even Italian.
 
The "grand sons of italy" describe real italian cookin,
google it they have a You tube video,

I will post a link in the BR.

Restaurants are rip off joints
 
Greg Rempe said:
I doubt that the Olive Garden charged for ice in the drink.

You are wrong. He had 2 drinks...the first neat and the second one with ice and it had 2 bucks added for the ice.
 
Does neat mean straight? If so that boy drinks just like I used to back in the old sinning days. Now I tell a restaurant rip off is ice tea. All it is is brown water and costs 2 bucks most times. I just order water. Now I aint like the cheapskate Baptists who order a bunch of lemon slices and try to make lemonade out of it.

bigwheel
 
And to state the obvious, my stuff just plain taste better :roll:

And for what they charge for a few drinks I can get a bottle of good scotch, Whats up with that??
 
bigwheel said:
"Now I aint like the cheapskate Baptists who order a bunch of lemon slices and try to make lemonade out of it."
bigwheel

Im not sure if thats directed at someone here or :?: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL:
 
I think I gotcha beat....Today Mcormicks and Schmick - 2 kids ate free - I didnt eat, 1 order calamari $10 - $11.00 appetizer - 3 beers for me & wife had a salmon somthin w/tea & a creme' brulet' / brulea' (you know what i mean) ....long story short...$59-. for 1 paying person = BS. I was so pissed..... dont get me goin on this.
 
Sorry about the salad....I shouldn't have put that in there :oops:

Restaurants are like the government. Times are bad they raise taxes. Restaurants loose business, they cut back on food and raise prices screwing the remaining customers.
 
I have a friend in Jersey that is an alcohol buyer for a handful of restaurants. Normal markup is 300% on alcohol. Guess they have to make their money somewhere. :shock:
 
cflatt said:
I have a friend in Jersey that is an alcohol buyer for a handful of restaurants. Normal markup is 300% on alcohol. Guess they have to make their money somewhere. :shock:

The mark up on ice is way higher. :roll:
 
I'll try to avoid the buzzsaw here for the most part....

1) you didnt get charged for ice, you got charged extra because a neat drink has more booze in the glass than a drink with ice,, been a topic of conversation in my city for the last couple of weeks

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04222009/ne ... 165615.htm

2) Most restaurants are barely hanging on these days, with many well known places just going out of business.. one can argue that they deserve to go out of business, in that the excess money that was floating around for the last few years just isnt there, so their business model got blown out of the water without the free spending people around to support them... surely gone are the Wall St. $75 hamburgers, and $150 steak dinners at places like the Kobe Club in NYC...Delmonico's, one of the oldest restaurants in NYC used to average over 200 lunches a day , now only serves between 40-60 lunches a day.. Venerable institutions like the 21 Cluyb in NYC has even relaxed their " Men must wear a coat and tie to get in" policy...


3) Fixed costs don't go down, rent, electric, gas, water, manditory municipal insepctions such as fire inspections, building inspections, ansel systems etc, taxes, taxes, and more taxes are all going up ....you'd call me a liar if I told you how much an ansel system inspection costs in NYC..

4) single establishment restaurants do not have the buying power to strong arm vendors into lowering their prices, so, in order to even keep up, they reduce portion size, hopefully not pissing off the customers too much...it is only of late that wholesale food costs are starting to go down...

5) 2 kids eating free, probably worth $15 on a menu other than McDonalds
3 beers, $15
salmon dinner $15-$17
appy $10
iced tea $2
and a Creme Brulee ,probably $5-$6

probably a $60 value, plus you got to get out of the house, and spend time with the family in a nice place, nice atmosphere, and at Mcormicks and Schmick, a well known, quality, restaurant

Moral of the story.... know going out that it's gunna cost ya, so what I do when i get edgey with money, or think a place is a rip off.. I stay home
 
Bobberqer said:
I'll try to avoid the buzzsaw here for the most part....

1) you didnt get charged for ice, you got charged extra because a neat drink has more booze in the glass than a drink with ice,, been a topic of conversation in my city for the last couple of weeks

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04222009/ne ... 165615.htm

2) Most restaurants are barely hanging on these days, with many well known places just going out of business.. one can argue that they deserve to go out of business, in that the excess money that was floating around for the last few years just isnt there, so their business model got blown out of the water without the free spending people around to support them... surely gone are the Wall St. $75 hamburgers, and $150 steak dinners at places like the Kobe Club in NYC...Delmonico's, one of the oldest restaurants in NYC used to average over 200 lunches a day , now only serves between 40-60 lunches a day.. Venerable institutions like the 21 Cluyb in NYC has even relaxed their " Men must wear a coat and tie to get in" policy...


3) Fixed costs don't go down, rent, electric, gas, water, manditory municipal insepctions such as fire inspections, building inspections, ansel systems etc, taxes, taxes, and more taxes are all going up ....you'd call me a liar if I told you how much an ansel system inspection costs in NYC..

4) single establishment restaurants do not have the buying power to strong arm vendors into lowering their prices, so, in order to even keep up, they reduce portion size, hopefully not pissing off the customers too much...it is only of late that wholesale food costs are starting to go down...

5) 2 kids eating free, probably worth $15 on a menu other than McDonalds
3 beers, $15
salmon dinner $15-$17
appy $10
iced tea $2
and a Creme Brulee ,probably $5-$6

probably a $60 value, plus you got to get out of the house, and spend time with the family in a nice place, nice atmosphere, and at Mcormicks and Schmick, a well known, quality, restaurant

Moral of the story.... know going out that it's gunna cost ya, so what I do when i get edgey with money, or think a place is a rip off.. I stay home

Well put;.....I see your point and the establishment's point.
What I have trouble with is being made to fell like a fool. Listing ice for $2 and the big one of slow service in hopes of ordering more rounds of drinks, and the killer of having parties sit in the bar area waiting for a table for 45 minutes past res.-time while a 1/3 of the tables open.
That kills any chance of return business.
By the way, what are you doing these days....it's been a while since I heard who's kitchen you are terrorizing. :LOL:
 
Bobberqer said:
1) you didnt get charged for ice, you got charged extra because a neat drink has more booze in the glass than a drink with ice,, been a topic of conversation in my city for the last couple of weeks

Not sure if I agree with that....

Drinks are supposed to be mixed by the shot glass or oz. not by how much ice is in the glass. If anything there's more soda or water in the drink than there is alcohol ( in most cases..haha ) right? :roll:
 
By the way, what are you doing these days....it's been a while since I heard who's kitchen you are terrorizing


terrorizing?? :shock: I resemble that remark!!!!! :? 8)
 
Well I dont have much expuriences in bars of course..but in this part o the world from whut I heard...you get the same amount of hooch in either a shooter or a mixed drink and for the same price. Knew there was some reason I don't live in Noo Yawk City. Making it in the restaurant bizness has always been a mounumental feat. Far back as I can remember they had the lowest survival rate of any bizness a entreprenural type might choose to try. I tell ya where the big money is and that be the shoe shine bizness. Fella over at the big car wash got one set up and claims to knock down 3 or 4 hundred dollars a day with supplies being a miniscule part of the operation. Mostly cash money so the guv'ment...Prez Osama and Nancy Polosie find it hard to track to come take it away. If I didnt have a bad back I might give it a try.

bigwheel
 

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