Sunday, March 1, 2009

Recession: Who is it hitting?

This past weekend, I was in Rochester, NY meeting up with some B(usiness)-School and college buddies for some drinks. One night, my b-school buddies and I went to an old haunt: an upscale restaurant named 2Vine. I've linked to the menu, but the average entree is about $30 with a typical meal averaging about $50-60 a person.

I was surprised when I called up the night before to get dinner reservations. We had to go at an earlier hour because they had much of their time slots reserved already. When I showed up, they had to turn away quiet a few people because they had no spots for walk-ins until 8:30PM.

This is surprising to me that they were doing so well. This isn't the first time I've been to a nice restaurant and seen it packed to the gills with people in the past few months. Sometimes I think that there are MORE people going to nice restaurants than before.

Perhaps people are choosing dine in or go out to eat nicely, but stop visiting the mid-tier resturants like an Applebee's or TGIFridays?

I don't know how I would collect that evidence, but certainly from this weekend, the rich don't seem to be that much poorer than before.

1 comment:

Leslie said...

2Vine is delicious! It's normally a little pricy for us, but our lab went there for our Christmas Lunch.

I live in Rochester full time, and I can say that we have not yet seen (m)any signs of the recession. Marketplace Mall and all of the restaurants on that strip are always PACKED, as are the theaters and stuff downtown. If anything it seems like shops are busier than ever.. and this includes everything from Wal-Mart to 2Vine type places.

However, we are affected by the stores closing... Linens and Things, Circuit City, KB Toys...