Groupons and other coupons

Restaurant.com coupons always seem like a good deal at the time -- you pay $2 bucks for a coupon which entitles you to $25 worth of food, which is hard to beat. But you have to order $35 worth to qualify, and nobody stops there. Plus, they have a host of prohibitions -- like you can only use them Sun.-Thurs. and restaurants have a nasty habit of just refusing to honor them any more.

This happened to Plot and Duck a year or so ago at a Persian place named Alborz up on Van Ness. "Sorry, we no honor coupon," said the waitress, apologetically, and the owner repeated it, not so apologetically. Plot or Duck could stay or leave. If Plottie had been there by himself he would have pitched a self-righteous fit, but...you know, you take your wife out for dinner...

When Groupon came out it seemed like a 'way better deal -- you pay, say, $20 for $40 worth of food, which is more to pay up front, but there are no choice-of-night restrictions and they are always honored, no questions asked, until they expire.

(DON'T EVER go to a restaurant on the last night of a Groupon promotion. Absolute Chaos. You've been warned.)

But last night was Sunday night. Plot and Duck were scrounging through their restaurant discount coupons and found one for Vega, which is close-by, up on Cortland. It's in the same spot where that wonderful old Hungarian sausage-maker had his shop for decades, before he died. It was another Italian restaurant in between, which wasn't too good.

Last night was really cold and windy, but a short ride on the 24 bus takes you up the hill in Bernal to within one block from the restaurant. And Duck knows a website (yes, it would be an app IF we had a smart phone) where you can see in real time when the bus is coming. The website works great, if only the bus paid any attention to it.

They had a fantastically tasty dinner -- as good Italian food as they've eaten in Saint Plotniko in years. They shared an appetizer of artichoke hearts stuffed with goat cheese and wrapped with prosciutto, over a delicious bed of greens; a Margherita pizza which (and this is coming from Pizza Grump here) was fabulous; and an order of home-made gnocchi with mushrooms, sausage and half a cow's worth of butter. MAN!

Ducknik drank a glass of Valpolicella and Plottie a glass of a quite nice Sicilian nero.

So now it's time to pay. Plotnik was curious to know how a restaurants.com coupon would compare to a Groupon.

The total bill was $68 (and that included a pre-added 18% tip). (The service was terrific and she deserved that tip.)(But it is irritating still to be charged in advance for a tip which should be optional.)(Of course, a tip is not optional. It is her wage.)(Plotnik always over-tips when using coupons because he knows the servers often suffer when people tip on the cheapened coupon-deflated bill rather than on the amount of actually served food.) (Plotnik was a cab driver once and then a piano player. So he knows about working for tips.)(Anyway.)

They took off $25 from the $68 total, including the tip. It came to $43. It had cost $2 bucks for the coupon. Total=: $45.

If he'd gone in there with a Groupon, he'd have received $40 worth of food for which he would have paid $20. So $68 worth of food, wine and tip, minus $40 is $28 plus the $20 for the Groupon: $48.

So there's a negligible difference, except that for the server and for the restaurant the Groupon is a worse deal. The server has her 'tip' figured in with restaurants.com but not with Groupon, so she doesn't have to worry about a customer undertipping. The restaurant makes out better too, because they only have to donate $25 worth of food instead of $40.

Groupon keeps its upfront charge -- ($20 in this case for a $40 food coupon) and the restaurant gets no share in it.

But in all cases the restaurant benefits by getting people like us into a restaurant where we probably would not have gone without the coupon. If the food is great we'll come back -- or will we? This is the wager the restaurant makes.

In this case, yes. It's close and delicious. In the case of Plottie's very favorite local restaurant, Olivia's on upper Mission, who is constantly offering Groupons to try and build their business, Plot used to go in there with Groupons but he was always embarrassed when he used it because he would frequently be the only customer in the place. (Well, the neighborhood isn't exactly the Marina, but he's not sure why they don't have more business then they do.)(It might have something to do with the chile.)

Now he doesn't buy the Groupon for Olivia's any more because he likes the husband and wife who run the place so much. He'd rather give them the extra $20 and hope they stay in business.

He is afraid he will walk in there one day and it will be a nail parlor. But not yet. You want to taste real mole? Olivia's. While you can.