Lunch for a fiver – is it worth it?
There are several promotional schemes about at the moment and, amazingly, some seem effective.
I generally scurry around the locality on a Monday and have noticed over the past few weeks that some of my lunch stops, which are usually dead on a Monday afternoon, look very busy. They have subscribed to The Times and the Financial Times "lunch for a fiver" promotions, with some success.
Nick Lander from the FT, who originated the idea, is one of the brightest journalists on the food scene and revamped and successfully ran L'Escargot restaurant in London's Soho, so I am not surprised by this success, nor by the scheme's emerging imitators.
I do not subscribe to this sort of deal for the Merchant House, however. This is partly because the restaurant is full on a fairly consistent basis and partly because I am suspicious that there are drawbacks to the arrangement on both sides.
The plus points, for the caterer, are meant to be twofold: potential new punters at an otherwise dreary time of year; and that these punters are likely to spend a few bob at standard prices on wine, coffee and the like while at table.
This is, of course, true, but leads to the main drawback. Those who have budgeted for a fiver a head are liable to feel robbed when the coffee and petits fours appear on the bill at £2.50, and quite agitated if the total including wine approaches the usual average spend. My thought is that any goodwill element is diluted by this.
Similar deal
In one of my previous incarnations, as a restaurateur in Stratford-on-Avon, I joined up for a similar deal through one of the credit card companies. The idea was that each table that produced a voucher got a bottle of house wine.
I was more naive then, and the promotion was an expensive disaster, bringing me boatloads of unpleasant cheapskates who argued the toss over whether they were entitled to two bottles as they had two vouchers - "we'll sit on separate tables, then we're entitled to a bottle each." Never again.
What the consumer advocates regularly fail to mention is that there is not just the occasional rogue restaurateur out to cheat the public, but the odd dimly greedy punter out to cheat the restaurant.
The real implication is, of course, that a meal which costs a fiver is by definition good value, and this is a proposition I find controversial.
The arrangement is presumably working fine for those who regularly sign up for it, but I would be interested to discover if those who come for the cheap deal ever reappear to pay full price once the promotion ends.
Next diary from Shaun Hill will be on 19 March
