First Annual TTZ Media Party
written by John Chow
Last night, I took affiliates of TTZ Media out for a dinner party at Roy’s Las Vegas. Reservations were made for 6PM but Bob at Think Computers had to be play the fashionably late card. He blamed it on his crew, his crew blamed it on him. Next year, I think I will add a “Whoever comes last pays” clause to the invitation.
Invite Only Please
Because my party was listed on a few CES party lists, I had people tried to get an invite by emailing me, calling me, or posting comments in the TTZ Media blog. One even went so far as to call Roy’s and ask them to add her to the party list. We had a fun time watching uninvited people show up at Roy’s asking where the TTZ Media party was. Here’s a little clue for all your cheap ass members of the press; when a party says invite only, it means you have to be invited.
The TTZ Media Affiliates
It’s good to see a bunch of TTZ Media affiliates make it Vegas for the CES. Hopefully, more will be able to attend next year.
The Three Course Dinner
Roy’s is an award winning Hawaiian fusion restaurant. Started by Roy Yamaguchi in 1988, the little restaurant has grown into 34-store operation. Dinner was a set menu with three courses. Everyone gets the same appetizer and salad, and then choose one of five Entrée selections. Roy’s dessert sampler plate is also included.
The food at Roy’s is good, but for the price, many restaurants in Vancouver can beat it.
20% Tips Is Not Enough, Can We Have More?
As I expected, Roy’s added an auto gratuity to the bill. What I wasn’t expecting was the tip to be 20%. Most high-end restaurants add 15% to 18% tips to the bill if there are more than six people in the party.
You would think 20% would be more than enough tips for a restaurant, but when I got my Visa copy to sign, there was an “Additional Tip” line for me to fill out. We got a good laugh at this. I felt like entering minus $100, but entered zero instead.
They say Vegas is a tip town. Well, they are right!
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I posted some pictures of that awesome food as well, thanks for the great night John!
Your food posts are the best! It was a nice gesture to take out your business associates for dinner.
FT
http://www.milliondollarjourney.com
I think someone tried entering negative tips for the sake of an experiment. Restaurants just ignore it and charge the total anyways.
After all, they already have your credit-card’s number and could go on a spending spree online. Signing bills is just a formality
hey big spender, duh dah duh duh
So who all went?
Wow… that looks awesome. You know you are popular when the press tries to crash your dinner parties!
crap, shouldn’t have read this when i’m starving. *tummy growls* looks like some great stuff
JOhn, I saw your own adwords ads on your site. You should add your sites url to competitive filter.
It was a great dinner. I know everyone had a good time. Thanks for putting it on!
Ha ha, I like how they call the automatic one “gratuity”, and then the extra one “tip”. They’re hoping you will be dumb enough to either miss the auto-gratuity, or not know what it means, and just add in another 15% extra.
So, how do we become part of your affiliate network to get free food at CES?
John - Good idea to take your initiatives for dinner.
Am sure you love food - you spend quite a bit on food every month !
That food looks pretty wonderful, looks pretty ‘high end’ indeed. I must say the 20% is pretty high, I’ve never seen a restaurant yet where they added more than 12% to the bill, usually they don’t even print a line for additional tips out here.
My wife and I just recently tried Roy’s over in Orlando, FL. It was very good, although for the money we spent I could think of several other restaurants in the area I’d choose over it. Great pictures of the entrees, though. Making me hungry and it’s only 9am!
+20% for gratuity and still trying to suggest you should tip some more? That must be Vegas right?:)
Didn’t they tell you everyone in the place takes a share of the tip?!
oh my god, those bills are freaking me out
[...] Reading John Chow’s latest blog entry, about the The Tech Zone media party at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, I was finally driven to ask (after months of watching Top Chef and Hell’s Kitchen): why is it considered good plating to stack food on top of other food? [...]
How many affiliates did you invite to the dinner? I see about 8 people? Were these your top performing publishers?
Stew
I imagine those are the only ones that made enough money to fly out to Vegas.
The food looks yum!
The bill isnt as high as your previous ones like at Lumiere, though isn’t Vegas supposed to have cheap(er) priced food. yea I know the quality definately doesnt match the price though….
I’ve come to the conclusion that high-end restaurants are not my thing. While the food looks really good, I think I prefer a place where I get more food than decoration on my plate.
You added “0.” You cheap bastard! LOL, J/K. By the way, what does it take for one to get invited to your parties? Come on man, I’m an attorney and you know everyone can use an attorney!
It look really nice. I just wonder if anyone can get filled with that.
My New Choice, I think I kinda tend that way myself, but my wife and I found this place in Augusta, GA is incredible.
HMTKSteve - At the moment I am not accepting new affiliates. I’m revamping the affiliate program. Once that’s done, I’ll open up affiliate sign ups again.
Stew - All affiliates were invited. I booked a table for 15, but 2 didn’t show up for the dinner.
Alex - The food is quite filling, once you add up all the course.
mmmm…that foood looks great!
Thanks again for the dinner John, it was very good. Also, it was nice to finally meet you on this trip. Hopefully it will not be the last time, since you sure know how to throw a party.
$1G isn’t bad for a night out at a 5 star restaraunt in Vegas… how does Roy’s compare to some of your favorites in Vancouver?
Max - Roy’s is a nice restaurant but it definitely isn’t 5 stars. There are probably 40 other restaurants in vegas that beat it without much argument….
This was probably the least expensive meal that I have shared with John in a while. Last time, I paid over $500 for two people at Lumiere.
20% tip is fair…I usually just do 20% at good restaurants since I can’t be bothered to calculate anything harder.
…oh, and the guy with the two glasses of wine reminds me of someone…I can’t remember who though. John…any ideas?
20% tip is the premium, no? I don’t remember ever tipping more than 20%… thought that was the standard for “Outstanding Service!”
The ironic thing about this whole “adding gratuity” thing is this - by having a big table booked the restaurant is enjoying a pre-meditated bulk of business - you’d expect a discount, no? just my thoughts.
Jeff, the tip goes for the servers so a discount isn’t in order, I don’t think.
If they do it right then it’s well worth it, as large parties can be a pain to work with. Some places don’t get it right, and those are the times when you’re thinking you should be able to set your own gratuity amount. In fact, some places automatically put it on the bill but it’s “optional”, per se.
A tip is up to the customer, not the restaurant. If the restaurant wants to mandate it, they can pay it. Not me. That’s a load of crap. The service, frankly, wasn’t that steller. It would have been a solid 15%, and no more for me. I was quite dissappointed with Roys when John showed me the bill and saw that.
Looks like a nice evening out.
I’d be interested to hear some stats on the earnings of TTZ affiliates, if anyone is happy to go into specifics. I would guess there would be a handful of big earners, a few moderate earners, and a bunch which do ok, but are perhaps only just over the cutoff traffic limit, and so may have pretty stretched pageviews to spread around their various revenue streams? I suppose the minimum 250,000 pageviews would mean some fairly high payouts all round?
John, I seem to recall you mentioning that the minimum pageviews is being lowered to 100,000?
Matt
Stephen, I totally agree. Most places I’ve been to that “mandate” the tip amount actually just put it there because it’s “easier” for the customer. I’ve only said no once and gave a tip that was appropriate, so it’s do-able at some places.
I dislike auto-gratuity… especially if the service is terrible. It gives little incentive to provide good service and I find it happening a lot. One of these days, if the service is really-really bad, I’ll be crossing out those auto-generated tips and writing what I feel belongs there. I agree with Stephen, the tip should be left to the customer to decide, not the restaurant.
Stephen, I completely agree. Now I generally do not eat in high class restaurants (combination of no money and Pittsburgh has none) but requiring a 20% tip is absolutely insane. Granted we had a large party but I could see no more than 15%, maybe 16% if they had really good service.
John should have written the additional tip in scientific notation like we were all saying.
Looks like a good meal. The dessert looks particularly interesting.
John, I hope you saw what I typed at the top. You could be losing money
Even though it doesn’t look like it would fill you up they usually do.
And it’s also a 3 course dinner so not only can the individual plates fill you up, the course definately will.
The deserts I find are always a good way to end a fancy dinner. The creativity is just amazing at times.
Stephen, one day you’ll have to invite me out for a fancy dinner
Thats a really small meal for the price… But it looks so good.
If you want a small meal for a big price, try blowfish sashimi
That food looks insane, I don’t think I’ve ever hard food quite like that.
Ha ha that dude with the two wine glasses cracks me up! Put the drinks down, you’ve had enough bro! LOL
haha…I hate party crashers too. The additional tip line doesn’t surprise me, it’s vegas who doesn’t ask for an additional tip.
[...] I also got free sake while I was there. It was the first time I had had sake and I didnt really like it, but since the waiter snuck it out to me and everyone there was cheering on, I was basically obligated to drink it all. I was perfectly happy with a nice tall, ice cold coke. Thats usually my beverage of choice when dinning. Now, this wasnt a cheap meal, but it was by no means as expensive as John Chows TTZ Media Party It was only about $25-30 per person. Luckily everyone paid for their own meals Which is what I would expect considering it was a surprise party. [...]