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Neat Upsell: Restaurant Caught Charging More For Bourbon Without Rocks
By
Garth Johnston
Published Feb 8, 2013
Modified Feb 8, 2013
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By
Garth Johnston
Published Feb 8, 2013
Modified Feb 8, 2013
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And one of the worst trends in modern bartending, the neat upsell, continues! In a harrowing story on Bussinessweek, Devin Leonard tells of the time he recently ordered a $13 Woodford boubon neat at BLT Burger and, upon seeing the bill, realized he'd been charged an extra $2 for having his drink without ice.
Leonard was understandably shocked by the idea of being charged for not having frozen water in his drink and complained. After being told by a manager that "everybody does it," he finagled himself a free second pour and something to ponder: Is this really common practice?
I’ve since been doing some informal polling. My friends say they’ve never been to an eatery with a policy of charging extra for neatness. I called the Bartender Boot Camp, a bartender instruction center in New York, to get an expert opinion. Jordan Goldman, the center’s manager, asked two of his instructors about the additional fee for not ordering ice. “One of them said he’d never heard of the practice,” Goldman reports. “The other one said the only time she’d done it was when she worked in a restaurant in a catering hall. They would charge two dollars. She got complaints all the time.”
In other words, BLT Burger is breaking new ground, which is just what I’d suspected.
Except, sadly, BLT Burger was not breaking new ground. The Neat Upsell has been popping up for at least two years. In 2011 when the practice was exposed at the club Le Poisson Rouge a marketing director tried to brush it off this way to us:
"Our standard drink pour is 1.5 oz.," Nelson explains. "However when a drink is poured neat or on the rocks it's a 2 oz pour. So the $3 charge is for the additional .5 oz. So by our prices the half ounce is actually a cheap upsell. You gain 1/3 of the amount of alcohol, for less than a 1/3 price upcharge. The receipt may look strange, but every bar in this city does an upcharge for an alcohol neat or on the rocks."
And that logic makes some kind of sense in the context of a club, where mixed drinks are the norm. That all falls apart in a restaurant though—people need to just list the price of their drinks!
In the meantime, moral of the story? Watch your receipts. And try and avoid the neat upsellers.
Tagged
blt burger
extra charge
gouging
ice ice baby
neat
neat upsell
no ice
read your reciepts
upcarge
upsell
Garth Johnston
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