Expo Icrontic food/drink concerns
primesuspect
Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
I'm getting a lot of feedback about food/drink concerns at Expo. This seems to be a hot topic for a lot of you, so I'm going to attempt (again) to explain our reasons, rationale, and stance.
The Cafe is hosting our event in exchange for the business it will generate. By taking this approach, we were able to cut ticket costs significantly from last year's prices (if you remember correctly, last year's tickets were $75...)
Therefore, in exchange, we are asking people in the nicest way possible: Please patronize the Cafe with your food and beverage needs when possible.
What we want to avoid is a situation where someone brings a cooler filled with their own drinks and food for the week, and avoids spending any money at the Cafe. This is against the spirit of the agreement we have with them, and against the spirit of the discount we're able to offer on the ticket prices.
To clear up any confusion: The cafe will be open until midnight, but the Expo will be open until 2am. After that, if you want to eat or drink anything, you cannot get it from the cafe.
The cafe, for obvious reasons, does not allow outside food and drinks for any of their customers. Therefore, if customers were seeing people from "the basement" bringing their own stuff in or eating their own food, they'd be all "not fair!" and we just want to avoid that.
We're not going to lay down and delineate lists of things that "are okay" and things that are "not okay", other than strictly forbidding bringing any liquor onto the premises. Basically, just try to understand: Be cool about it, don't be a dick, please patronize the Cafe; their prices are fair and they have a lot of stuff to offer. If you really need to bring your own stuff, then please bring it between midnight and 2am.
I hope that makes it clear.
That said, Tracey asked me to put the question out to the community: If there's a particular item you want that she doesn't stock, she'll order it for us. What kinds of energy drinks/sodas/cold stuff do you want? She'll be happy to stock it for the Expo crew, and probably for less money than you can buy it at retail anyway.
The Cafe is hosting our event in exchange for the business it will generate. By taking this approach, we were able to cut ticket costs significantly from last year's prices (if you remember correctly, last year's tickets were $75...)
Therefore, in exchange, we are asking people in the nicest way possible: Please patronize the Cafe with your food and beverage needs when possible.
What we want to avoid is a situation where someone brings a cooler filled with their own drinks and food for the week, and avoids spending any money at the Cafe. This is against the spirit of the agreement we have with them, and against the spirit of the discount we're able to offer on the ticket prices.
To clear up any confusion: The cafe will be open until midnight, but the Expo will be open until 2am. After that, if you want to eat or drink anything, you cannot get it from the cafe.
The cafe, for obvious reasons, does not allow outside food and drinks for any of their customers. Therefore, if customers were seeing people from "the basement" bringing their own stuff in or eating their own food, they'd be all "not fair!" and we just want to avoid that.
We're not going to lay down and delineate lists of things that "are okay" and things that are "not okay", other than strictly forbidding bringing any liquor onto the premises. Basically, just try to understand: Be cool about it, don't be a dick, please patronize the Cafe; their prices are fair and they have a lot of stuff to offer. If you really need to bring your own stuff, then please bring it between midnight and 2am.
I hope that makes it clear.
That said, Tracey asked me to put the question out to the community: If there's a particular item you want that she doesn't stock, she'll order it for us. What kinds of energy drinks/sodas/cold stuff do you want? She'll be happy to stock it for the Expo crew, and probably for less money than you can buy it at retail anyway.
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WINNER
I would like to request "Bawls" the blue ones.
http://www.bawls.com/
yup
Just curious.
So, is the tap-water in the cafe good? If not, would it be too rude for me to just bring a case of water?
12 oz. of 5-hr making you insane, ya right. You only start to get nutty after 4+ days of no sleep and that is partially because you start to black out for a few seconds on a high frequency. Come back when you drink 2 redlines in under 12 hours.
*beams* I try. (Also I've done the CC handling thing, such a pain in so many ways.)
Here's wishlist.
- Flavored Coffee: Anything with blueberries in it is awesome.
- Flavored Coffee: ...also anything with strawberries.
- Orange juice with pulp.
- Yogurt, not too terribly picky, just nothing with coconut.
- ... pretty please mark anything with coconut.
Also be prepared for Consumption of Mass Quantities. If we could figure out some way to arrange for coffee in the basement, that would be super beyond awesome.
Credit/debit card taken up front and tied to name on badge. It would be like Super Badge!
/me "Redbull Please?"
*BAM*FLASHES DIGIBADGEtm*Ca-chiga*
/awesome waitperson "No Problem Mr. Digital"
/me Caffeinated Heaven
Win.
I can almost guarantee with utmost certainty that if she can avoid running credit cards for everyone, she will. If she's planning on discounting food for us as is, she's losing money on that in addition to the 3-6% she'll lose paying the credit card fees too.
When you ask about tabs, ask her if she has a preferred way of payment that would benefit her the most... one large check or cash amount at the end might be preferred in her books.
Also, you're going to have to find a happy medium for energy drinks methinks. There's no way she's going to purchase a case of Bawls, 5-hour, NOS, Four Loko, etc. if one person requests it, particularly if she's got a distribution agreement with a particular company.
As for other snacks/drinks I like to get a 6-pack of gatorade/powerade and a big bag of candy to last for the event. Especially gummy bears/worms, gimme a 5lb bag o' that!
I'll be at a strict disadvantage for the TF2'ing now.
//edit: Also, I second the call for BAWLS.
^^^ Yup.
Thing is, it's the transaction fees we're looking to avoid here. You have a processing fee (percentage of sale) and a transaction fee (flat charge) associated with each transaction. Typical rate is $0.12-0.75 per transaction - that's per run of the card, in other words. So if someone buys 4 coffees at $2.50 each and swipes the card each time, that can cost $0.17 in processing fees - no big deal - but up to $3.00 in transaction fees - OUCH! BUT! If that person buys 4 coffees and swipes their card ONCE, it's still $0.17 in processing but only $0.12-0.75 in transaction fees. Ta-dah. (Feel free to abuse my knowledge to your advantage, merchants!)
That said, I don't know what Tracey's setup or arrangement is. Though I do know that it's not quite that high these days - typically around 1.25 to 2% excepting Amex. (AMS is currently offering 1.69% + $0.25 transaction with no monthly minimums, for example.)
You know, I didn't think about checks, and that actually isn't a bad idea at all. (Some banks can be pains about checks though.) For some of us though - especially myself - paying a tab in cash is a non-starter. Mine will be... significant. I really do drink a LOT of coffee. But at the same time, paying with a check might make more sense for some of us. Sorry folks; I'm old. I still have actual checks. No seriously.
Actually, drinking a ton of 5 hour energy shouldn't really do anything to you. If you look there's no caffeine or sugar in that stuff. It's just a flavored liquid vitamin shot. All water soluble vitamins at that. How you react to drinking 12oz of it would depend on how you react to B-vitamins in general. For most people, they'd not notice much of a difference over the recommended dosage as they'd just piss away whatever their body couldn't use.
There's actually about as much caffeine in a normal 5 hour energy as there is in a large cup of coffee. Plus the vitamins.
It'd be a fun experiment... perhaps if we don't explain the above to the test subject there would be a fantastic placebo effect... such as giving an O'Douls to a teenager that's been nagging you for a beer....