Slapshot From The Point (On Dubious Achievements)
Of all the NHL records that the great Wayne Gretzky set over his amazing career, there is one record of which he is most proud (although Gretzky is so humble and self-effacing that it's difficult to say that he's proud of it), one record which he feels is the one least likely to ever be equalled or broken: 50 goals in 39 games, a feat which he achieved on Dec. 30, 1981. However, I've done something that I'll bet Wayne Gretzky has never done: I finished my first World Beer Tour at Old Chicago restaurant.
For those of you who don't have Old Chicago in your neighborhoods or are unfamiliar with the program, allow me to explain it. Old Chicago has an extensive beer menu, with many different kinds and styles of beers from all over the world. Their slogan is "110 Beers, One Bar". If you sign up for the World Beer Tour program (it's free to join), they will hand you a swipe card that keeps track of every beer you consume in their resaturants, up to four per day (you can certainly drink more than four if you'd like, but only four will count towards World Beer Tour completion). They will award you prizes as you go along - 10 beers is a deck of Old Chicago playing cards; 40 beers is a pewter bottle opener; 55 beers is a t-shirt; 85 beers is a baseball cap, etc. You need to drink 110 different beers to complete a World Beer Tour. Your prize when you complete your first tour is an Old Chicago sweatshirt. You also get your name engraved on a plaque in the "Hall Of Foam" (get it?). They have mini-tours occasionally throughout the year, and consuming the 8 or 12 specific beers on the mini-tour within a certain timeframe earns you a mini-tour t-shirt.
It took me about six months to complete the tour. If you figure that each beer on the tour averages about $4, that means that I've spent a minimum of $440 at Old Chicago over the past six months, just counting the cost of the beers. Since I usually ordered food along with my beer (and after you factor in tax and a characteristically generous tip), that number is probably significantly higher. So, that started me thinking about this program that seemed like such a cool idea and such a great deal at first.
Visit the Old Chicago website: (http://www.oldchicago.com/RockBottomWeb/OC/Home.aspx
They have a list of the prizes people get after they finish each tour, along with the prize thresholds. For example, completing your 15th tour earns you an Old Chicago fleece jacket. Completing your 20th tour earns you an Old Chicago stadium seat. Complete 40 tours and you win an Old Chicago leather jacket (notice anything all of these prizes have in common?). The highest prize point Old Chicago could envision anyone achieving is apparently 50 tours, the prize for which is......... (sound the trumpets!) a pizza party for you and ten friends! Get real. 50 tours. That's 5,500 beers! If you went in there every single day and drank your maximum of four beers they'll award you each day, you could finish a tour in about 28 days. If you did that for a year, you would have completed 12 tours. At that rate (if you didn't have a job or a family, say, and money was no object and as long as your liver held up), you could theoretically finish 50 tours in a little over 4 years. I wonder if anyone really ever has finished even 25 tours.
I think it's only a matter of time until some alcoholic develops cirrhosis and dies from trying to win these prizes they're offering, and his/her family sues Old Chicago over it and they quit having this World Beer Tour. Maybe they'd try to settle out of court by offering the grieving survivors a t-shirt that read, "My dad died doing the World Beer Tour at Old Chicago..." on the front, and "...but we got a really nice Old Chicago stadium seat!" on the back. At the very least, they should recalculate these prize levels downward so that even completing 10 tours would get you a leather jacket (the current 40-tour prize) or the pizza party. It makes them look cheap when certain prize levels are realistically unattainable.
How much would a pizza party for me and ten friends cost them? Maybe a couple hundred bucks, three at the most? By the time someone gets to that 50-tour level, they would have spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $22,000 at Old Chicago, on beer alone. I know they're in business to make money, but that's ridiculous. Their large pizzas sell for an average of about fifteen bucks, so even if they figured that each person in your party would eat a whole pizza (which they won't), it would cost Old Chicago about $165 for the pizza, and maybe another $150 for beverages (based on 4 beers @ $4 for each person, which is probably a high estimate - most people won't drink four beers, and some will drink pop), if they're even included - it does say pizza party for you and ten friends. You might be on your own for drinks.
So, an investment of approximately $22,000 (just for beer, no food included) nets a person a return of about $300 for the pizza party, while earning Old Chicago a gross profit of well over $21,000! What a gyp.
Cheers!
For those of you who don't have Old Chicago in your neighborhoods or are unfamiliar with the program, allow me to explain it. Old Chicago has an extensive beer menu, with many different kinds and styles of beers from all over the world. Their slogan is "110 Beers, One Bar". If you sign up for the World Beer Tour program (it's free to join), they will hand you a swipe card that keeps track of every beer you consume in their resaturants, up to four per day (you can certainly drink more than four if you'd like, but only four will count towards World Beer Tour completion). They will award you prizes as you go along - 10 beers is a deck of Old Chicago playing cards; 40 beers is a pewter bottle opener; 55 beers is a t-shirt; 85 beers is a baseball cap, etc. You need to drink 110 different beers to complete a World Beer Tour. Your prize when you complete your first tour is an Old Chicago sweatshirt. You also get your name engraved on a plaque in the "Hall Of Foam" (get it?). They have mini-tours occasionally throughout the year, and consuming the 8 or 12 specific beers on the mini-tour within a certain timeframe earns you a mini-tour t-shirt.
It took me about six months to complete the tour. If you figure that each beer on the tour averages about $4, that means that I've spent a minimum of $440 at Old Chicago over the past six months, just counting the cost of the beers. Since I usually ordered food along with my beer (and after you factor in tax and a characteristically generous tip), that number is probably significantly higher. So, that started me thinking about this program that seemed like such a cool idea and such a great deal at first.
Visit the Old Chicago website: (http://www.oldchicago.com/RockBottomWeb/OC/Home.aspx
They have a list of the prizes people get after they finish each tour, along with the prize thresholds. For example, completing your 15th tour earns you an Old Chicago fleece jacket. Completing your 20th tour earns you an Old Chicago stadium seat. Complete 40 tours and you win an Old Chicago leather jacket (notice anything all of these prizes have in common?). The highest prize point Old Chicago could envision anyone achieving is apparently 50 tours, the prize for which is......... (sound the trumpets!) a pizza party for you and ten friends! Get real. 50 tours. That's 5,500 beers! If you went in there every single day and drank your maximum of four beers they'll award you each day, you could finish a tour in about 28 days. If you did that for a year, you would have completed 12 tours. At that rate (if you didn't have a job or a family, say, and money was no object and as long as your liver held up), you could theoretically finish 50 tours in a little over 4 years. I wonder if anyone really ever has finished even 25 tours.
I think it's only a matter of time until some alcoholic develops cirrhosis and dies from trying to win these prizes they're offering, and his/her family sues Old Chicago over it and they quit having this World Beer Tour. Maybe they'd try to settle out of court by offering the grieving survivors a t-shirt that read, "My dad died doing the World Beer Tour at Old Chicago..." on the front, and "...but we got a really nice Old Chicago stadium seat!" on the back. At the very least, they should recalculate these prize levels downward so that even completing 10 tours would get you a leather jacket (the current 40-tour prize) or the pizza party. It makes them look cheap when certain prize levels are realistically unattainable.
How much would a pizza party for me and ten friends cost them? Maybe a couple hundred bucks, three at the most? By the time someone gets to that 50-tour level, they would have spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $22,000 at Old Chicago, on beer alone. I know they're in business to make money, but that's ridiculous. Their large pizzas sell for an average of about fifteen bucks, so even if they figured that each person in your party would eat a whole pizza (which they won't), it would cost Old Chicago about $165 for the pizza, and maybe another $150 for beverages (based on 4 beers @ $4 for each person, which is probably a high estimate - most people won't drink four beers, and some will drink pop), if they're even included - it does say pizza party for you and ten friends. You might be on your own for drinks.
So, an investment of approximately $22,000 (just for beer, no food included) nets a person a return of about $300 for the pizza party, while earning Old Chicago a gross profit of well over $21,000! What a gyp.
Cheers!
posted by Dave at 9:24 AM
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