Blessings in Criticism: An Exploration of Space & Its Costs

After 38 years of putting on shows and doing everything I can to create great spaces and make the business sustainable, I am finally giving in to a drink minimum (in our case a food and beverage minimum). Even Starbucks announced this week, if you’re coming into their space, you need to buy something. The old saying in live entertainment goes, the “profits are in the popcorn”, and in our case, it is no different, except ours is wine. Most of us independent venues give more than 75% of the ticket price to the performing artists and much of the 25% balance goes into marketing and production costs. For musicians and comedians, this is a critical part of annual income, and we are big part of the ecosystem. This requires us to find other revenue streams to pay our bills: rent, insurance, utilities, labor costs, security, etc. etc. Maintaining “space” is expensive.

So this week, we made the announcement to our one-million or so customers via email that if you’re going to come into our space, you need to patronize us too. And as expected, we did receive a couple of negative comments.

“You suck!”

“Did not think you would be so greedy”

“FU SCUM BAGS”

“Should not be an issue if you had better choices on the menu”

“While the wines and beverages are good, your pizza is no better than frozen

supermarket pizza. Folks are happy to pay for quality food.”

“Your seats do not contain the average butt, so you need to add space and bigger

chairs accordingly”

“Why gouge us more, take more in the ticket price”

“You already charge too much for your tickets”

Etc. etc.

Some emails did come in very understanding, supportive, lots of constructive criticism, and frankly some heartfelt and honest concern from our patrons. But to communicate to anyone who wrote us, I quickly started writing a response to send to every person who commented. Here it is:

Dear Joe,

I appreciate your perspective on our policy shift, this was not an easy decision; as we have had no food and beverage minimum since starting City Winery. But the costs of rent, insurance, utilities, labor, among so many other operational costs have reached a place that require the implementation of a minimum for our survival. As we wrote in the announcement, more than 75% of the ticket price goes to the artist and the balance goes towards marketing and production. Essentially nothing from the ticket covers our overhead to allow for the shows to happen. We resisted this as long as we could, but without any other revenue streams, we simply can’t operate.

We appreciate that not everyone consumes alcohol or are on special diets and we have tried to deliver a menu that meets as many needs as possible. We are just looking for our customer’s understanding that we are an independent venue with intimate spaces and that everyone needs to contribute a little something to the house, not just the artist on stage. It’s not just fair, but essential. With that, we will be doubling down on our staff’s speed of service and quality of our new menu roll-outs. We are doing our best. Thanks you for listening.

Sincerely,

Michael

I then wrote this to our team who were getting discouraged by negative leak to social media and even some phone calls.

Dear Team,

This is going to seem odd, counter intuitive, but the criticism we received so far from our announcement of the minimum is very healthy for us. As difficult as it is to read the negative feedback from 45 people so far who have taken the time to write us, or the 150 people on Reddit and FB, many have not even stepped foot into our space, but feel a need to comment. From the jerks who simply say this is BS to the 15-year vinofile members who are truly concerned about seeing terrible hospitality from their favorite venue, this will all serve as an inspiration to get it right moving forward. We either have 900,000 people who are currently subscribed. If one-million, 50,000 negative comments would have been 5%, 5,000 would have been .05 percent, 500 would be point, zero zero 5, and the 50 would be a tiny spec on edge of nothing. Not that we should feel good about any critical observations, and we will lose a few people who have zero empathy to us being a cultural organization trying to make a profit in a very difficult space, but overall, this was not bad. They just are very loud.

Nevertheless, we need to read each and every email response, especially those with who are very reasonable, kind, and offering honest feedback because they actually do care about our on-going livelihood and see that there has been consistent negativity about our service and food in the past. But let’s make this the past. With the launch of the new menu, lets also launch a concerted effort to have every manager pay serious attention to the floor staff to the bar tenders to make sure they are doing a great job. Nobody should ever wait or feel neglected in getting a drink. Even if we need to add one or two people to make up their hourly wage 10x or more in sales, we can do that. But they really need to managed. Let’s use this moment to push for zero criticism on our service, on our hospitality. Let’s strive to allow for no one to criticize us on our food or service. The menu moving forward will be great and only getting better. Let’s really push for this for every one of our customer facing team members to deliver exceptional, Danny Meyer level hospitality. But it requires our 110% attention starting with the management, GMs, service ops, floor ops, bartenders, waiters, seaters, greeters, everyone.

Thank you all,

Michael

We clearly understand the need to deliver on our promise of good food and drink and get it to people with fast friendly service, if we are demanding something back from them. This is obvious. But I wonder, as I continue to respond to a number of our customers in longer conversations, as well as the news media starting to cover (this just came out in the Boston Globe as I am writing this…. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/01/15/arts/city-winery-minimumfee ) how much disclosure do I need offer to rationalize this step. A guy from Boston is drilling us hard about this policy shift and when I told him our rent was over $1m a year in that location alone, more than $3,000 per day just in occupancy costs, he changed his tune. To another patron, I explained when you add all the other overhead including labor, and it becomes clear we need to make a gross profit of over $10k a day on average. Am I providing too much detail in trying to make every customer understand this?

Back in the daze when Sun Ra played the Knitting Factory on Houston Street and sang, “Space is the Place”, I never considered he was referencing Real Estate as the place for landlords to make money. Do we really need to explain to music fans the economics of why they need to help contribute to taking up space in our place? Is the cost of space getting too expensive for live music and comedy? I don’t accept that.

I also don’t accept that the only answer is for Live Nation or AEG, the multi-billion-dollar duopoly, to be the only business model in live entertainment to afford space. Yes, it is challenging to be independent company, and I think we are doing as good a job as anyone else in the market, but how transparent does one need to be to deliver a change to our customers? For now, we will continue to work as hard as we can putting on great shows and create as hospitable space as possible, even if that is one customer at a time.