You may go to a restaurant for the menu, but the owner wants you to drink

NY Times -   Damon Wise opened his barbecue restaurant, Pineapple Express, in Montclair, N.J., with a traditional business plan. Forty percent of the revenue would come from food sales, and 60 percent would come from alcohol. A veteran of the New York City restaurant world who had operated restaurants in multiple states, he knew this was the magic ratio.

But over the past two years, that ratio started to break down. First, the food and alcohol split became 50-50; then revenue slid further, with 70 percent coming from food and only 30 percent from alcohol. In January, Mr. Wise announced Pineapple Express was closing.

“There’s a lot of factors that come into closing a restaurant, and that was really one of them. It kept coming up in all the meetings, ‘What can we do to get people to drink more?’” Mr. Wise said.

He’s sympathetic to people who need to avoid alcohol — he quit drinking five years ago. But his dying happy hour business and catering orders (which in the months before the closure had cash bars rather than customers paying up front for alcohol that guests may not drink) seemed to tell a more complex story. “I think with the economy, people are really holding on to their money,” Mr. Wise said.