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http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/ ... es-of-fans
(Crain's) — Next restaurant's second dining season sold out its three-month stint in 90 minutes Tuesday, despite a previous attempt that ended in disaster.
The restaurant put 2,000 of its tables on sale at 4:30 p.m. At its peak, roughly 16,000 people were trying to lock in reservations for an eight-course Thai menu.
"Things went mediocre," said Nick Kokonas, who co-owns Next and Alinea with chef Grant Achatz. "(It was) great on the sales and marketing side, lousy on the web execution side. We will fix it and go at it again."
Next restaurant had to abandon its Monday attempt to sell all 2,000 tables when eager-beaver buyers trying to load its website in anticipation of the sale crashed the servers and brought everything to a screeching halt.
"I told (the developers) to go really big (on the servers) and no one believed me, apparently," Mr. Kokonas said. So the restaurant waited a day while it migrated to a number of cloud-based servers that it hoped could handle the traffic.
In spite of moving to more servers, diners seeking a table hit several roadblocks and took to Facebook and Twitter to vent their frustrations. Some complained of freezing screens, while others griped about trouble getting credit cards to process the transaction.
Many ended up snatching up whatever table they could with hopes of trading it for a different date. Next restaurant's Facebook page was peppered with diners looking to swap reservations.
The Fulton Market restaurant opened in May to much fanfare, with a French dinner menu.
Not only was it the sister restaurant of Michelin-rated Alinea, which earned the highest ranking of three stars, but it was adopting a reservation process that asked diners to pay for their meals in advance. Next offers one themed-meal a quarter and everyone eats the same exact meal, but pays a different amount based on time and day. A Saturday night meal, for instance, costs more than dining on a Wednesday night, with prices varying by time of evening too.
Dinners cost from $65 to $115 in the main dining room ($165 for the kitchen table), plus drinks, tax and gratuity.
In Next's first attempt, it released tables through out the three-month period as the kitchen staff became more comfortable in preparing the Paris 1906-themed meal. In the end, every seat was filled.
Last week, Next floated a test balloon by selling 200 reservations for just Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Diners snatched them up in a matter of seconds.
"Next time we will be on something 10 times as robust and the sale could take place in a minute," Mr, Kokonas said.
(Crain's) — Next restaurant's second dining season sold out its three-month stint in 90 minutes Tuesday, despite a previous attempt that ended in disaster.
The restaurant put 2,000 of its tables on sale at 4:30 p.m. At its peak, roughly 16,000 people were trying to lock in reservations for an eight-course Thai menu.
"Things went mediocre," said Nick Kokonas, who co-owns Next and Alinea with chef Grant Achatz. "(It was) great on the sales and marketing side, lousy on the web execution side. We will fix it and go at it again."
Next restaurant had to abandon its Monday attempt to sell all 2,000 tables when eager-beaver buyers trying to load its website in anticipation of the sale crashed the servers and brought everything to a screeching halt.
"I told (the developers) to go really big (on the servers) and no one believed me, apparently," Mr. Kokonas said. So the restaurant waited a day while it migrated to a number of cloud-based servers that it hoped could handle the traffic.
In spite of moving to more servers, diners seeking a table hit several roadblocks and took to Facebook and Twitter to vent their frustrations. Some complained of freezing screens, while others griped about trouble getting credit cards to process the transaction.
Many ended up snatching up whatever table they could with hopes of trading it for a different date. Next restaurant's Facebook page was peppered with diners looking to swap reservations.
The Fulton Market restaurant opened in May to much fanfare, with a French dinner menu.
Not only was it the sister restaurant of Michelin-rated Alinea, which earned the highest ranking of three stars, but it was adopting a reservation process that asked diners to pay for their meals in advance. Next offers one themed-meal a quarter and everyone eats the same exact meal, but pays a different amount based on time and day. A Saturday night meal, for instance, costs more than dining on a Wednesday night, with prices varying by time of evening too.
Dinners cost from $65 to $115 in the main dining room ($165 for the kitchen table), plus drinks, tax and gratuity.
In Next's first attempt, it released tables through out the three-month period as the kitchen staff became more comfortable in preparing the Paris 1906-themed meal. In the end, every seat was filled.
Last week, Next floated a test balloon by selling 200 reservations for just Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Diners snatched them up in a matter of seconds.
"Next time we will be on something 10 times as robust and the sale could take place in a minute," Mr, Kokonas said.
81 is now off the air
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as for the restaurant itself - really pay for a meal ahead of time? go online weeks and months in advance for a reservation? people are nuts.