The week in ideas, April 8, 2013

Discounts for guys with guns. Upcharges for custom meals. Charging waiters for dashers. And a St. Louis restaurant keeps serving after the power goes out.

Idea #1: Open-carry night. A Virginia restaurant is offering a 15 percent discount to patrons who bring their guns to eat with them. Brian Crosswhite, owner of The Cajun Experience in Leesburg said positive reaction has outweighed the negative.

Idea #2: Charge more for custom dishes. So this New Jersey couple, who started bringing their own box of dry pasta to have Italian restaurants prepare for them after they went vegan, are shocked, SHOCKED, that the latest establishment they tried this out on charged them extra for cooking a custom dish on a Saturday night. Their expectation was not only that the dish would be cheaper than a comparable pasta dish off the menu, but that they’d also be able to use their coupon. The owner of Monticello in Red Bank, New Jersey, called the cops on the couple when they refused to pay their bill. You want pasta from a box? Stay home.

Idea #3: Make the waiter pay for a dine and dash. It’s legal in some cities, but do you really want to do it?

Idea #4: Don’t let a power outage shut you down. When the power went out in one St. Louis neighborhood the other night, Oceano Bistro kept its doors open while others closed up shop. The restaurant got inventive: using butane burners to heat water out back for washing dishes and cranking up their mobile bbq usually used for catering.

 

 

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