The Bad Economist

Anecdote Alert: Do restaurant deposits depress attendance? January 1, 2015

Last night I spent New Year’s Eve at one of my favorite restaurants, Verace in Islip, New York. I actually did New Year’s Eve there last year, too, and there were three very interesting changes. The upshot is that the restaurant, though it had a fantastic menu, was significantly less full than it was last year, and the crowd skewed slightly older.

First, the price of the dinner was $65 last year and $85 this year. That corresponds to about a 30% price hike. That might deter some people, but I’m skeptical. The price-elasticity of demand for restaurant meals is about 2.3, or very elastic. (That means that if the price of a restaurant meal changes by 1%, the quantity of restaurant meals sold would drop about 2.3%.) If that’s the correct elasticity to apply here, that would explain a 69% drop in attendance, but I’m not so sure that restaurant meals on New Year’s are as elastic as restaurant meals during the rest of the year. The well-known Valentine’s Day Effect causes price elasticity for certain goods (cut roses) to drop on Valentine’s Day, and since a meal at home isn’t a close substitute for a restaurant meal on a special occasion, I’m skeptical that this price change would explain the precipitous drop in attendance.

Second, the restaurant required a deposit this year – $50 per person, returned at the beginning of the meal as a gift card. This was my first hypothesis, but I’m not sure it’s much of an explanation. For one thing, I put down my deposit on Monday, so there was no real loss of value. $50 per person to hold a spot is well within the income for most demographics that you see at Verace most nights [more on this in a moment], especially since it operated as a credit on the bill. No dice here, really.

Third, this might be the big one – Verace is part of the Bohlsen Restaurant Group, which operates a couple of restaurants at slightly different price points. This year, BRG made a big deal of advertising different, keyed experiences at their different restaurants. Specifically, Teller’s was a much more expensive steakhouse offering, Verace was a meal only, but Monsoon – their lower-priced, Asian fusion restaurant – had a modular menu with options of $75 for a meal (a bit cheaper than Verace, but not much) and $75 for an open bar. The open bar and Monsoon’s dance floor almost surely made it more attractive to younger revelers. That also explains the shift in demographics – Verace’s younger crowd may have been cannibalized by another BRG restaurant.

In the alternative, our waiter’s hypothesis: The manager did a great job seating people. “This guy,” says he, “is a magician.” He may be, but I’m more interested in seeing Monsoon’s numbers.