It used to be that all drinks at a club were ordered and brought out the same way – you order with a waitress and she’d bring out the drinks, bottles, etc. Regardless of what you ordered, regardless of price, you pretty much got the same experience on how it was delivered to your table. Fairly simple.
At some point, clubs realized that when people order a several hundred dollar bottle of alcohol, they would add an experience to its arrival at the table. In particular, in many clubs today, if you order a bit bottle of champagne, its arrival has become an experience unto its own.
Several scantily-clad waitresses walk out, with sparklers lighting up their way, holding both sparklers and the bottle up high for everyone to see. Knowing no specific numbers from club owners, I can guarantee that the take rate on bottle orders went up 3-4x almost immediately.
Think about it, clubs changed simply ordering a bottle of champagne into the experience of ordering the champagne. Patrons, most often men, began ordering not simply because they wanted the drink, but because they wanted the experience, the attention of everyone nearby who thought it was so cool to have your bottle arrive with sparklers and beautiful women.
Frankly, for the cost of these bottles, clubs should’ve done this. But the incremental cost of their doing so is so minimal that it’s a no-brainer to do it as they more than make up for it in volume.
The real question, then, is why don’t more businesses do the same – create an experience for a special order, product or service. Restaurants try to do this with birthdays. Some hotels and airlines try it for premium or loyal customers – even as simple as Virgin Atlantic providing pajamas on long-haul flights. Especially when the cost is low, but even if it requires a bit of added cost, mimicking this idea of creating an experience around an order is something that more businesses could and should look at.
Turns out there’s a lot more to do in a club than simply the people-watching.
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