acroyear | A Bartender's Metaphore...

Ultimately, would you rather your bartender were liberal or conservative in pouring?

Yeah, so you have a Conservative bartender, who pours less and less with each drink, but doesn't charge you for the occasional or simply holds the prices down on the whole (however, the business itself eventually goes in debt anyways because holding prices doesn't support the raise in prices they get from their distributors). also, in doing so, the place cuts back heavily on its food menu items 'til eventually all you can have are fried appetizers -- if you want real food, you'll have to go cook it yourself.

then you have the liberal bartender who pours generously, but as such the business notices how expensive alcohol consumption is and has to eventually raise the price per drink. The liberal business recognizes the value in a diverse menu in providing customer satisfaction...

take your pick -- either get less for less, or more for more, but neither side simply will stick to something that works and leave it alone. both sides are trying to make you happier, either by generous portions or lower prices.

my problem with the conservative approach is that their drink selection is so small -- they only go to those distributors who are friends and give THEM a supplier-side discount (for the sake of a relative monopoly). in fact, some drink distributors [like haliburton] managed to get an exclusive contract without anybody shopping around for a better deal, or other distributors even knowing the bar was buying.

the liberals on the other hand like to supply you with every possible brand of drink to give you a choice. their eventual goal is to create a very complete and generous open bar, at a fixed-price per person. of course, the fact that some people drink FAR more heavily than others makes non-drinkers rather mad at paying for such abuse...

so does either work in the end? likely not.

but simply looking at it from the perspective of what is this one bartender doing for me tonite totally misses how the restaurant business operates.

update: and don't EVEN get me started on how large a parking lot the conservative bar has...