by GroundKontrol on Sun Aug 14, 2011 11:08 pm
The cover on Friday & Saturday nights (usually ~9PM-midnite) is a recent thing. Unfortunately, we just can't handle as many people as we used to. :( The remodel reduced the number of people we can let in by 30%, even though we didn't lose any square footage (be very, very careful before remodeling an old building - it's usually cheaper to tear it down and start over than to increase capacity or even keep it the same). But the remodel also has made us very popular on those nights. Often too popular. We were having lines going down the block waiting to get in, so that those roll-ins from the local meat-market clubs you mentioned could hang out, nurse a drink, and not play games.
Charging a $2 cover during our absolute peak got rid of most of that. I don't like charging a cover for people such as yourself who are there to play games, but the alternative is to make you wait outside for a half hour to an hour while the people who don't want to spend money hang out inside. The cover seems to discourage the hangers-on. I'm sure it discourages some good customers, too, but no more so than a line to get in would.
My recommendation is to come during the 94% of our hours that we don't charge a cover.
I'm sorry that TZ wasn't up last night. We got it late yesterday afternoon. Mark came in on his weekend to get it ready, but its problems were deeper than expected, and it took him all day today to finally get it working. AFAIK it's up as of Sunday night. The table is a beaut, HUO. Probably too nice to operate, but we're crazy like that. ;)
PS we're probably about 3 weeks from having full liquor service, OLCC willing.