Can A ‘Pay What It’s Worth’ Menu Work Longterm? No.

Posted on 15. Jul, 2010 by Inside Hospitality in Industry News, Mystery Shopping

This is a pretty interesting story we have been following for the last few weeks. Vancouver, BC, based Rogue Kitchen and Wetbar has come up with an interesting approach gimmick to restaurant marketing. Allow customers to “Pay What You Think It’s Worth”.

Has it been tried before? Yes.

Has it ever worked? No.

The restaurants claims this is a success, this restaurant opened on June 11th. (34 days ago to be exact) this isn’t a success. It’s a gimmick, a crap shoot that will backfire. This is not a long term  (or even a short term) marketing approach.

It’s just a bad idea.

Restaurant Tells Customers to ‘Pay What It’s Worth’

Proving there is honour among rogues, Rogue Kitchen and Wetbar announced today it is extending its groundbreaking “Pay What You Think It’s Worth” program indefinitely.

Customers take the Rogue Oath: “I promise to pay the fair market value for the food I am about to eat.” The menu suggests prices but patrons can pay less if they think the fair market value of their meal is less than the menu price – and are honour bound to pay more, if they believe it’s worth more.

When Rogue opened for business on June 11, 2010, it introduced the program on a trial basis only. It received much initial attention and scepticism from the mainstream media (National Post: Can a pay what you want restaurant break even? Salon: The bold “pay-what-you-want” restaurant experiment). Many wondered whether Rogue would be repeatedly stiffed by unscrupulous freeloaders. Either the program would fail or Rogue would go broke.

“We really weren’t sure ourselves if the program would work,” says Marnie Burnett, Rogue’s director of business development. “We serve a lot of different types of people at Rogue, especially because we’re located in Vancouver’s main transit hub, Waterfront Station.”

“But tour customers have taken the Rogue Oath seriously, and to our utter amazement, the amount of people paying more than the stated menu price has almost exactly equalled the amount where people have paid less.”

Read full story at Restaurant News Resource by clicking here!