Gamification: How Bar Owners Use Exchange Mechanics to Increase Cocktail Sales



    In our blog, we have already talked about how traders make money on the exchange using social networks , how stock quotes are influenced by the New Year holidays and why office workers choose online trading as a hobby .

    The stock market is becoming more open, which is expressed not only in the growth in the number of participants and the penetration of new technologies into the financial sphere, but also in the fact that exchange trading mechanics penetrate “into the outside world”. Today we’ll talk about how drink owners use them to increase sales.

    "Hand of the market" and the price of a drink


    The idea of ​​combining a pricing system that is familiar to investors and an exchange speculator during trading with the sale of alcoholic beverages is not new - the first attempts to launch such projects date back to the middle of the 2000s.

    For example, in 2004, the Beer Exchange bar began operating in St. Petersburg, in which there were no fixed prices for beer. The drink was sold in an institution “at fair bidding” - the price of a glass of beer varied depending on the demand for a particular variety.

    There was a similar establishment in Moscow - Stock Exchange Bar also refused fixed prices for drinks. The institution's menu had more than 200 cocktails and other alcoholic beverages - the prices for them were displayed on the scoreboard and changed depending on the demand for a particular position. As a result, those drinks that were ordered more often at a particular moment became more expensive, while less popular drinks, on the contrary, became cheaper.

    In addition, the opening was widely discussed in the press.in the summer of 2015 in London, the Reserve Stock Exchange bar, which quickly became popular among the financiers of the British capital. The scheme implemented by its creator is more complicated than that presented in Russian institutions: there are three “markets” in the London bar - the “beer market”, the “strong alcohol market” and the “alternative market”. Each of them has its own menu, displayed on three separate screens. The cost of drinks in these "markets" changes in real time - like stock prices on the stock exchange.



    At the same time, the screens show not only the current price of drinks depending on the demand for them, but also data on the maximum and minimum prices per day, as well as the price trend for the last few hours.

    The owner of the bar said in a conversation with reporters that when it was created, he consulted with companies that work in the financial market. As a result, he managed to implement a scheme in which buying a drink at the right time can bring up to 50% of the benefit compared to its cost in other institutions. As in the real stock market, during the “alcohol trading” real drops can be observed followed by a sharp increase in demand.

    The names of the cocktails in the bar are also chosen based on the stock exchange theme - for example, the most popular drink is called Black Tuesday (Black Tuesday) and refers to the historical collapse of Wall Street quotes in 1929, which launched the Great Depression in the United States.

    One of the traders surveyed by journalists described your experience visiting the institution:

    I buy my favorite drinks at their negative peak. To calculate it, first I distribute my favorite cocktails in the order of my preferences. Then I make a rating based on how their prices change overnight. However, if I really like the drink, I can be somewhat biased, and the whole strategy flies to hell.

    Alternative schemes


    There are other options for introducing stock market game mechanics in bars. So a couple of months after the opening of a London restaurant in St. Petersburg, the Nargilia Oil bar also began its work. He also uses the concept of "exchange" pricing for alcoholic beverages, but unlike the London bar, the creators of the Russian institution use a different model for determining demand.

    While in the London Reserve Stock Exchange it depends on the specific demand for drinks, in the St. Petersburg bar the price is based on the number of occupied tables. The less free seats in the room, the higher the price. In addition, in the Russian bar there is not only an alcohol exchange, but also a hookah market.



    The interior of the establishment resembles an oil refinery - a tower is painted on the walls, monitors hang on the walls, on which charts and quotes are broadcast. In addition, as in the London bar, in Neft there are brand names for cocktails that are adapted to Russian realities - for example, instead of Black Friday, they pour Yukos cocktail here.

    Visitors and critics like the idea of ​​transferring stock exchange mechanics to bars - London's Stock Stock Exchange has become one of the most popular places in the British capital in a short time and has been included in the list of the best weekend destinations from Esquire magazine. Popular Russian media also wrote about the Russian Nargilia Oil , in addition, the institution was actively discussed by users of the profile community of traders.

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