One Last Party for Drew's Eatery after Disastrous Discount Deals

Actually, unless it has changed recently, anything under $10 goes 100% to Groupon.

OK, I'll (half-heartedly) defend Groupon, since everyone is piling on.

I've only ever done two Groupons:  SEE Eyewear and Sweet Mandy B's bakery.  I'd never patronized either establishment, but got a good deal on their wares on Groupon and came away from both experiences happy enough that I've been a repeat customer at Sweet Mandy B's (well, really it's my wife) and would buy another pair of glasses at SEE.  So I've never had the crappy Groupon experiences that others have.

But I will admit that I was careful about what I got a Groupons for.  I knew I'd use them, and use them quickly.  I can imagine a Groupon restaurant experience being pretty terrible, especially on the expiration day for the Groupon rush, so I'm not surprised about the "bad review on Yelp" phenomenon.  I'd imagine a Groupon is almost always a bad idea when a rush on your goods would be detrimental to the customers' experience with your business.  After all, what's the point of a business doing a Groupon besides free advertising?

Well, it's not free advertising. It's just advertising. They pay a lot for it both in Groupon's cut and whatever it costs them to supply the food.

Yeah, I definitely misspoke on the "free" thing.  Pretty much the point of this story.  Businesses pay a pretty price...

The one and only Groupon restaurant experience I've had was a horrendous experience.  Yes, I made the mistake of going with someone on the last day of the Groupon (it wasn't my Groupon, it was her's and I'd never done the Groupon thing), but you'd also think that the restaurant might have upped the staff to handle the fact that they had a Groupon expiring.  I didn't find it necessary to rant about it on Yelp, and I don't think my experience was typical of the restaurant, but I also have no great desire to go back either.

If I like a restaurant, I'm not going to use a Groupon to go.  I'm also probably not going to go to a restaurant that is offering a Groupon (see experience above).  It's kind of like when I see a restaurant on Check Please. 

The only good Groupon experience I've had was when they offered 2-1 movie tickets.  I had a movie I wanted to see and I used the Groupon the same week I bought it.  Worked perfect.

Now, the real question is whether the 2 for 1 deal resulted in you patronizing that theater any more than you did before. I am guessing that it did not. Most of us have a few theaters we don't ever go to, but all the others compete on (1) movies showing, (2) times, (3) convenience.

Good point.  I'm trying to remember what I saw, and if it was one of those "have to see in the theater" or "want to see it but I'd be happy to wait till video" releases.  I honestly see very few movies in the theater (I'm a hermit, you know), so the Groupon might very well have been the push to actually go see it, rather than wait.  If that was the case, then Regal made a little money they wouldn't have otherwise.

This illustrates another aspect of the bad deal for the restaurant.  My movie tickets were paid for with the Groupon, but there were lots of optional add-ons at the theater which were full price (popcorn, soda, parking, arcade games, etc).  Regal was likely to make money off of the person buying the Groupon, even if they initially lost money on the ticket sale.  Restaurants don't typically have that, as the Groupon pays for a set amount of food.  You keep your bill under that amount, and there's nothing additional that the restaurant can sell you. 

ETA -- and to your specific point about venue, no, the Groupon didn't have anything to do with it. The theater I went to is the one I always go to, they just happened to have the groupon deal.

Also, a movie theater is going to show a scheduled movie anyway, regardless of whether there are 2 people or 100 people watching it. There's no additional expense in adding people. At a restaurant, every meal involves the expense of food and drink on the restaurant's part.

Yes, but there is still additional money to be made by having you show up without the Groupon. Given the marginal costs you rightly pointed out, they don't need Groupon to add people. They can give 1/2 off without sharing the loot with Groupon. If Groupon has any value, it is return visits at full boat.

I like the comments above about Yelp. In terms of restaurant reviews, I've always felt Yelp is the holy grail for self-important nobodies to act like what they say matters. It all reeks of so much pretentiousness and self-absorption.

All I want to know about a restaurant is what dishes people are liking, what's popular. I don't need to know how the food went into their mouth, what connection they had to it, the texture, etc. Just tell me if the food is good or not. I particularly like the iPhone app "Nosh" which allows people to rate menu items on a scale of 1 - 5, and post pictures. It's quick, it's brief, and it doesn't have all the long-winded "my great/bad experience" rhetoric like Yelp does.

I think Yelp works great for some things - apartment landlord reviews, non-food business reviews, stuff that isn't so horribly subjective as a meal.

I think Yelp is an outgrowth of whatever it is that's driven the whole food-writing fad the last few years. We live in an age of narcism in which people really want to make their opinions known. (That's why web site comments sections flourish. It's why I'm here.) Writing is hard, though, especially if you try writing about something complicated or distant or about which you're unfamiliar. But everybody eats. It's the second most-basic animalistic self-indulgent urge, but since it doesn't carry all the cultural weight of sex, it's a lot easier to write about. So everybody does it. I would bet that if you categorize all the people who have written for this site over the years, you'd find food writers outnumber everybody else by a significant margin.

Not everybody can write for Chicagoist, though. Those who can't and don't find the comments section satisfying can pour their souls out on Yelp and be happy.

/ironicnarcism

I'm sure it had everything to do with Groupon and nothing to do with their $5 vegan hot dogs and $8 ice cream.

As someone that consults a lot of restaurants, I always steer people away from groupon, or any deal site for that matter. basically just reiterating what has been said above. Not just the huge food losses, but an influx of people for a place that will be understaffed = bitchy yelp reviews about poor service. oh, that reminds me, i hate yelpers. bunch of fuckstacks that thinks the world owes them something because they paid half price for it. if you actually want a result from your complaints, take that shit to twitter. instant satisfaction, usually.

You know another reason to hate Yelp? The way people try to make their posts "funny." Why is that an evaluation point? Also, too much backstory. 

"So, I was walking around thinking that I wanted a fat-free feta cupcake when I realized that I was in front of the Fat-Free Feta Cupcake Emporium. Now, I'd been in here 6 years ago, when it was a different business and I found the decor troubling, so I was leery to go in. However, I did . . ."

The question yelpers need to ask themselves is this: does anyone fucking care? Because the answer is no.

1) Restaurants go out of business all the time - they are, of course, a notoriously risky business proposition.  So I'm glad that the owner is making it clear that you can't "blame Groupon".  Anyone who "specialized in ... vegan ... hot dogs" in Chicago must either have some way of locking in all 27 people in the metro area who like vegan hot dogs and can find a way to milk (harhar) tons of profits off them, or is just nuts.  (Particularly if you're trying to put that vegan faux-hot dog on a gluten free bun.  Seriously?)

2) I certainly understand why writers and editors who operate at pretty mediocre levels of journalism would be really excited to generate lots of column inches/air time running stories like "Groupon killed this restaurant!"  After all, Groupon is "trendy", this is a story that "bleeds" to a degree, and it's hard to ignore the fact that Groupon is essentially a form of advertising that competes with their own ad sales.  Let the crap flow!

3) None of this is to say that Groupon is either good for restaurants or a good business/business model.  Take a look at the coverage of Groupon's business side in the tech world (e.g. Ars Technica) and you'll see a huge amount of skepticism about many aspects of Groupon (from the fact that it's easy for competitors like Google and Facebook to take market share from them, to issues like Groupon's "innovative" (creative?) accounting - specifically it's "ASCOI" which made lots of people say "WTF? That's not GAAP!".)

I was right about something once, so I have to keep pointing it out. But I've always thought there was no way the extra traffic from a Groupon deal justified a restaurant virtually giving away food. Giving away your product does not suddenly become more profitable when you're giving away a lot more of it, and word of mouth from the results of a Groupon are is almost always bad. Another reason Groupon is doomed.

I stop reading any Yelp review that starts out "we went here for the Groupon deal ....."

The cheapskates ALWAYS leave bad reviews because they expect top notch service even though they never spend more than the Groupon minimum and often tip badly with no intention of ever returning.  I genuinely feel for any restaurant owner who gets rushed by a Groupon crowd (usually day before expiration) only to have them squawk on Yelp about how they were not treated like Kings.

As is probably apparent to people who read what I post here, I often disagree with what to many is a given. Thus, a site designed to collect the opinions of other people is useless to me. Yelp does nothing for curmudgeons.

I can't wait for Groupon to go the way of Drew's.

 I seriously doubt Groupon is ever a good deal for restaurants. Between the rush of cheapskate customers and the following poor reviews that show up on Yelp, I would steer clear if I was a restaurant owner.  Good luck, all you folks who purchased on the IPO.