A newly-opened restaurant in Guizhou took a big hit last week after a 'pay what you want' promotion totally backfired.
The cave-themed restaurant opened for trial operations on October 2 in Guiyang. To attract customers, owner Liu Xiaojun (pictured above) and his partners came up with a special promotion that let customers pay however much they wanted for their meal, regardless of how many dishes they ordered.
But their promotion somehow didn't go as planned. While it certainly attracted patrons, most of them used it as a chance to dine and ditch. Some miserly customers paid only 10 percent of the bill, while others dropped just a single yuan for their meal.
When all was said and done, the restaurant ended up losing RMB100,000 in just seven days. The losses were so substantial that they led to a quarrel among the three partners, which resulted in one of them backing out for good and returning to his hometown.
The promotion was ended after a week.
Liu expressed his disappointment at the customers' behavior, telling state media:
"From customers' feedback, we know our dishes are tasty and of an adequate size. But the payments don't correspond to those evaluations. They should at least pay enough to cover the cost of the ingredients. It's understandable that people like eating food without paying much money. What confuses me is that they haven't returned since the promotion ended."
Ouch.
[Image via People's Daily]
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