As you can probably tell from this regularly occurring column, restaurants love to roll out reasonable, albeit sometimes confusing, rules for dining out. Some wonât seat you until all of your partyâs present, some will limit how many times you can split your check, and some will even dictate how much youâll tip out once that checkâs been dropped.
But thereâs another ruleâa pair of them, actuallyâthat restaurants frequently enforce: When a guest meets friends for happy hour, all of them are going to have to take a seat and dine in (happy hourâs not for carry-out), and all of them are likely going to order at least one drink in order to take advantage of any happy hour discounts.
Check out the Mercury's guide to 75 of the best happy hours in the city.
Happy hours, as you know, take place during any given restaurantâs slowest times: between lunch and dinner services and, at some places, right after dinner service. In other words, they go down when most of us are neither hungry nor thirsty, but not so full that we canât pass up a good deal.
These two rules are best described as a sort of unwritten contract, which states that a customer will gladly fork over $3 or $4 for a draft beer (which they were probably going to order anyway) in order to share with their friends a $5 basket of French fries thatâs been discounted to $3.
Basically the restaurant is telling guests that itâs willing to offer them fair to excellent discounts in order to fill its seats during the slowest hours of business. Itâs a win-win for the restaurant and the guests. So why do these twin rules need to be enforced?
Because there are some folks who balk when told about themâand not because theyâre cheap. They just might not understand that the goal is to lure people in with food specials in order to get them to take advantage of the drink specials, too. And everybody knows that the return investment on a drinkâeven a discounted oneâis a lot better than it is with food. And if you donât drink alcohol, you can always take advantage of food deals by ordering a soda pop. Those count as drinks, too (although itâs likely a soda will cost just as much as, if not more than, a cheap, discounted happy hour pint).
Restaurants, of course, want their guests to dine inâespecially during slower timesâbecause theyâre banking on the very good chance those guests are probably going to order more than a shareable basket of fries and one adult beverage (or soda). And theyâre right in thinking so, because nearly all of us will. Thatâs why we show up to happy hour in the first place. We canât just expect to order take-out at happy hour prices. Dining in and ordering that drink shows that weâre committed and totally cool with upholding our end of this brief social contract in exchange for some cheap eats.
All that said, there are a couple of things to keep in mind when youâre heading out for happy hour. First, just because you canât carry out your happy hour fare doesnât mean you canât carry out what you and your friends canât eat. I write this because Iâve seen this happen. Iâve literally watched as a server told their happy hour guests that, even after theyâd spent an hour eating, drinking, and chatting with their friends, that they couldnât have their leftovers wrapped up in to-go boxes because itâs against the rules and the rules are the rules. Thatâs profoundly fucked up. They paid for that food, they just couldnât finish it. Thereâs no reason that it should end up in the compost bin because of the ârule.â If this has ever happened to you, Iâm sorry, and if it happens to you again, ask to speak with the manager, whoâll set that server straight.
Another tip? If youâre eating discounted food or drinking discounted drinks, feel free to tip on the regular amount. You donât have to, of course, but if youâre the kind of person whoâll tip $1 instead of 60 cents on that $5 basket of fries thatâs been discounted to $3, your server will see you as the kind of person who âgetsâ it, which virtually ensures that from now until forever youâll be treated like gold every time you drop by.
