Just checked the tracker… the blog set a new record for number of hits in one day yesterday – 960. Otto installed a WordPress plugin on my blog which is supposed to make it more friendly to search engines… guess it’s working.
Now that I know how much it costs to get a plate on the wall at the Flying Saucer ($1,263.75), it’s time to crunch some numbers and see what that means.
I drank 207 beers en route to getting my plate. That’s because the Saucer lost 10 (5%) of the beer tickets I handed in to record that I drank each beer. I got 3 of the beers credited back. The other 7 I didn’t bother with, looking at them as part of the true cost of getting a plate (because most people wouldn’t go to a manager and get them credited; heck, most people probably wouldn’t even realize they lost beers).
Dividing $1,263.75 by 207, I get a cost of $6.11 per beer, including tip.
The $1,263.75 total includes a consistent tip of 30% throughout the 207 beers. Want to know what the per-beer cost without the tip? $1,263.75/1.30 = $972.12, which would be an average of $4.86 per beer. The average beer at the Saucer costs more than $4.86, but I held the total done by drinking Fire Sales and Pint Nite beers wherever possible. Also, because there are slightly more than 200 beers on the menu, I was able to avoid the two $30 bottles, as well as a lot of the Samuel Smith and Lindeman’s beers in the $10-14 range.
If you think I should only count 200 beers, I can do that too: $1,263.75 / 207 * 200 = $1,221.01.
If you think the count should be 210 because I got 3 credited back, it would be $1,263.75 / 207 * 210 = $1,282.07.
If you tip some other amount than I do, you can multiply $972.12 by 1.15 to get a total of $1,117.94 if you’re a 15% tipper, or $972.12 * 1.20 to get $1,166.54 if you’re a 20% tipper.
At an average cost of $4.86/beer, if I had not gotten any of the 10 tickets the Saucer lost credited back, I would’ve spent an extra $48.60 on the plate ($68.13 including tip).
In the 2 months and 10 days it took to do my plate, 8 Saucer girls either quit or got fired.
And those are the stats. It’s all over but the plate party. Tonight I’ll show up for trivia and go back to drinking $2.75 Fire Sales. Hope the Fire Sale beer isn’t something disgusting like Turbo Dog. I wonder if I’ll be able to maintain my record 960 hit count without daily beer reports. They were the most interesting part of the blog, after all. With the beers all done and with the new safety patrol having run all the bums off, what do I have left to write about?