You have these ideas sitting in direct contradiction with The Atlantic's viral 'Americans Need To Party More' story of recent. Respectfully, why should we charge more for those looking to alleviate America's party drought? If anything, one drink for a 15 minute buzz feels more overindulgent than the proposed $300 Negroni. Why not instead of an expontial equation, we price drinks along a parabola, with the first drink being one of the more expensive. As the initial buzz subsides, your next few drinks come at an ever increasing discount, at which point you've consumed enough to be properly buzzed. At some drink threshold however, prices have increased again, enough to make you wince as you tip your bartender. The night is halted prematurely, but before you get to the point of texting an ex or making a move on a coworker. Along with that, bars benefit from the higher initial drink prices AND the flock of borderline-messy patrons leaving before their words are too slurred.
Parabolic may be the better function here! It creates a different, and potentially better, dynamic for the bar. The expensive first drink acts almost like a cover charge; you're filtering for people willing to pay a higher price. Then, drinks two and three are a given - you want to get your money's worth, and you already have the sunk cost from your overpriced first drink. Three drinks is probably right around where people start to let loose and have a little fun, so the bar maintains a fun (but not over-intoxicated) vibe. Then, right as you're becoming a problem, the tax reappears - your price for drinks four and five spike up, and your bad decisions need to be made somewhere else (or you're paying for the privilege of texting your ex in our space).
I like it - maybe there's a follow up piece exploring other pricing equations. A logarithmic function could rapidly raise your prices to a cap before flattening out - if $200 for a drink isn't stopping you, $400 wouldn't either. Or a quintic polynomial to lull customers into a false sense of security.
Re: Americans Need To Party More, I fully buy into Ellen Cushing's argument - there's plan makers and plan takers, and too many of us are plan takers. I’d like to write a future idea that helps reach her goal of 2 hosted parties per year per American - maybe in a few weeks!
I think if we make the Parabola a perfect inverse of the Balmer's Peak we will have fostered the perfect buzz - or "in the pocket" as the iconic Lahey coined.
For tracking piece, RFID wristbands or a pre-pay system could clean things up and make it harder for people to game the system.
On the retention beyond the 3rd, you could lean into unlockable drinks/cocktails at certain thresholds—give folks special craft creations or off-menu items. Also, instead of a leaderboard, what about a big, collective progress bar for the group? Could hit those social and urgency components that works well in most e-comm settings.
Honestly, this feels like it’d absolutely crush as a pop-up. Just imagine the merch.
I love the idea of unlockables and a group progress bar! It’s hitting both the individual incentive - the status symbol of getting a drink that not everyone can order - and social pressure (we’re all in this together to spend $25,000 tonight!). You could totally combine both too - e.g. at $10,000 total spend, we’re bringing out the complimentary popcorn machine. And individual unlocks actually reinforce the RFID system - if you try to cheat, you won’t get credit towards higher tier drinks.
Merch is also a ton of fun. I bet you could get dramatic with it; make shirts for different milestones, with each milestone getting a cooler looking shirt. And like the Super Bowl, you can refuse to sell shirts for the losing team.
Would love to see this as a popup, if you’re the one to do it I’ll be your first customer!
haha, refusing to sell shirts to the losing team is the kind of petty brilliance i'm here for. lmk if you ever want to collab on some non-dumb ideas; i'm full of em!
Idea for limiting Externalities as exclusively a Pregame Spot
Starting out with below-market drinks is most certainly the move to entice players into the game but how do we keep them playing in addition to the flex/charity/trophy incentives?
Solution Proposal: Escalating Quality/Uniqueness of Experience
Say you and your friends go to Externalities knowing that the first drink is only $4.99. “can you believe it?? $4.99 for an espresso martini and then we are most certainly out of here! What a bunch of suckers!”
You arrive around 7pm since you plan on hitting a couple of other spots after since you heard there may be a happy hour going on down the block for $8 espresso martinis but still cant beat an Externalities first drink deal.
You and your friends arrive and the first drink is fantastic and hits perfect, the vibes are good but you are reminded that it may be time to bounce.
SUDDENLY a curtain opens and a violinist starts playing a melodic hip hop rhythm and a rapper jumps out from the crowd. “We cannot miss this, and hey, the second drink is only a tiny bit more expensive….”
Maybe rooms start opening up, games start appearing, but the key theme is:
That’s actually a brilliant expansion on the idea - what if you did this at major concerts? Taylor Swift probably wants to tax you for overdrinking on the eras tour, and you won’t leave if you’re there for a show. Broadway, football games, concerts - anywhere you can’t or won’t leave, they control payment methods, and overconsumption is annoying.
Not the same thing but this made me remember a beer-focused bar in Austin in the mid 2010s that had a dynamic pricing model ("prices based on supply and demand!"). The beers were divided into categories (IPAs, etc.) and on every purchase the price of the beer purchased went up and the price of every other beer in that category went down.
It’s not as extreme ($300) but I’ve heard of a bar in NYC that’s stock exchange themed that does exactly this. The more of one drink that gets ordered, the more expensive it gets. Toronto also just opened a bar like this two years ago. Really cool concept
I remember waiting for my pizza at a restaurant and seeing someone who had left, and left a lot of pizza untouched. My idea was for a secondhand pizza restaurant where you could be something like a second-class guest and eat the leftovers.
I remember my wife thinking it was a bad idea, which it probably was. I was hungry though, so maybe it seems slightly better to me in the moment.
I think the nugget of gold here is the leaderboard. People love the whimsical temporary status of having bought the most drinks; it reminds me of people who carry around 20-cup stacks of empty Honey Deuces at the US Open
You have these ideas sitting in direct contradiction with The Atlantic's viral 'Americans Need To Party More' story of recent. Respectfully, why should we charge more for those looking to alleviate America's party drought? If anything, one drink for a 15 minute buzz feels more overindulgent than the proposed $300 Negroni. Why not instead of an expontial equation, we price drinks along a parabola, with the first drink being one of the more expensive. As the initial buzz subsides, your next few drinks come at an ever increasing discount, at which point you've consumed enough to be properly buzzed. At some drink threshold however, prices have increased again, enough to make you wince as you tip your bartender. The night is halted prematurely, but before you get to the point of texting an ex or making a move on a coworker. Along with that, bars benefit from the higher initial drink prices AND the flock of borderline-messy patrons leaving before their words are too slurred.
Parabolic may be the better function here! It creates a different, and potentially better, dynamic for the bar. The expensive first drink acts almost like a cover charge; you're filtering for people willing to pay a higher price. Then, drinks two and three are a given - you want to get your money's worth, and you already have the sunk cost from your overpriced first drink. Three drinks is probably right around where people start to let loose and have a little fun, so the bar maintains a fun (but not over-intoxicated) vibe. Then, right as you're becoming a problem, the tax reappears - your price for drinks four and five spike up, and your bad decisions need to be made somewhere else (or you're paying for the privilege of texting your ex in our space).
I like it - maybe there's a follow up piece exploring other pricing equations. A logarithmic function could rapidly raise your prices to a cap before flattening out - if $200 for a drink isn't stopping you, $400 wouldn't either. Or a quintic polynomial to lull customers into a false sense of security.
Re: Americans Need To Party More, I fully buy into Ellen Cushing's argument - there's plan makers and plan takers, and too many of us are plan takers. I’d like to write a future idea that helps reach her goal of 2 hosted parties per year per American - maybe in a few weeks!
I think if we make the Parabola a perfect inverse of the Balmer's Peak we will have fostered the perfect buzz - or "in the pocket" as the iconic Lahey coined.
Kind of really love this. A few thoughts:
For tracking piece, RFID wristbands or a pre-pay system could clean things up and make it harder for people to game the system.
On the retention beyond the 3rd, you could lean into unlockable drinks/cocktails at certain thresholds—give folks special craft creations or off-menu items. Also, instead of a leaderboard, what about a big, collective progress bar for the group? Could hit those social and urgency components that works well in most e-comm settings.
Honestly, this feels like it’d absolutely crush as a pop-up. Just imagine the merch.
I love the idea of unlockables and a group progress bar! It’s hitting both the individual incentive - the status symbol of getting a drink that not everyone can order - and social pressure (we’re all in this together to spend $25,000 tonight!). You could totally combine both too - e.g. at $10,000 total spend, we’re bringing out the complimentary popcorn machine. And individual unlocks actually reinforce the RFID system - if you try to cheat, you won’t get credit towards higher tier drinks.
Merch is also a ton of fun. I bet you could get dramatic with it; make shirts for different milestones, with each milestone getting a cooler looking shirt. And like the Super Bowl, you can refuse to sell shirts for the losing team.
Would love to see this as a popup, if you’re the one to do it I’ll be your first customer!
haha, refusing to sell shirts to the losing team is the kind of petty brilliance i'm here for. lmk if you ever want to collab on some non-dumb ideas; i'm full of em!
This is like XKCD’s “What If” but for business ideas.
10/10 can’t wait for more
An amazing read, I really enjoyed that but.. I do think that it's not the best idea. Thanks for sharing it though !
I love this concept. Such a fun read, I’m a new fan for sure
Idea for limiting Externalities as exclusively a Pregame Spot
Starting out with below-market drinks is most certainly the move to entice players into the game but how do we keep them playing in addition to the flex/charity/trophy incentives?
Solution Proposal: Escalating Quality/Uniqueness of Experience
Say you and your friends go to Externalities knowing that the first drink is only $4.99. “can you believe it?? $4.99 for an espresso martini and then we are most certainly out of here! What a bunch of suckers!”
You arrive around 7pm since you plan on hitting a couple of other spots after since you heard there may be a happy hour going on down the block for $8 espresso martinis but still cant beat an Externalities first drink deal.
You and your friends arrive and the first drink is fantastic and hits perfect, the vibes are good but you are reminded that it may be time to bounce.
SUDDENLY a curtain opens and a violinist starts playing a melodic hip hop rhythm and a rapper jumps out from the crowd. “We cannot miss this, and hey, the second drink is only a tiny bit more expensive….”
Maybe rooms start opening up, games start appearing, but the key theme is:
Vibe Escalation
That’s actually a brilliant expansion on the idea - what if you did this at major concerts? Taylor Swift probably wants to tax you for overdrinking on the eras tour, and you won’t leave if you’re there for a show. Broadway, football games, concerts - anywhere you can’t or won’t leave, they control payment methods, and overconsumption is annoying.
Not the same thing but this made me remember a beer-focused bar in Austin in the mid 2010s that had a dynamic pricing model ("prices based on supply and demand!"). The beers were divided into categories (IPAs, etc.) and on every purchase the price of the beer purchased went up and the price of every other beer in that category went down.
It’s not as extreme ($300) but I’ve heard of a bar in NYC that’s stock exchange themed that does exactly this. The more of one drink that gets ordered, the more expensive it gets. Toronto also just opened a bar like this two years ago. Really cool concept
Maybe they'll stay because by the time the price shoots up they are already too drunk!
Ha, fun idea, but probably a tough sell.
I remember waiting for my pizza at a restaurant and seeing someone who had left, and left a lot of pizza untouched. My idea was for a secondhand pizza restaurant where you could be something like a second-class guest and eat the leftovers.
I remember my wife thinking it was a bad idea, which it probably was. I was hungry though, so maybe it seems slightly better to me in the moment.
Do you have nothing better to do? Cor?
Drink early and often, mates.
Made me think about the opposite.
What if adjustments in chiropractic clinics gradually decreased the longer they are utilized as patients become healthier.
Channeling the Law of diminishing utility.
Also made me realize that the second and third drink are more valuable than then first as they get you closer to the “buzz”.
After that…who knows.
The stock market bar.
Need to find value in things nobody wants to drink.
Sambuca + Grappa on the rocks.
sign me up. I'm buying a $300 Negroni.. for the kids, of course.
I think the nugget of gold here is the leaderboard. People love the whimsical temporary status of having bought the most drinks; it reminds me of people who carry around 20-cup stacks of empty Honey Deuces at the US Open
We can make this the most expensive game of wizard staff in history!