New Scaratings

Details of what's going to happen in the coming weeks are speculation at best right now, but one thing is certain: Rembrandt Pub and Grill has been sold effective January 16th

The current owners are retiring, and after a quarter-century in the restaurant business, I can't blame them one bit for choosing to enjoy their golden years and spend more time with their family. The new owner also owns NOtaBLE, one of Calgary's newer and best-acclaimed fine dining establishments. Word is he bought Rembrandt's in order to have a pub-type establishment, rather than another high-end restaurant. The place will be shut down shortly after the handover for some amount of renovation, but to what extent and for how long is unknown. I can't even say for certain whether the most-excellent service and kitchen people will choose to keep their jobs, or even be offered that choice

Apparently the Golden Tee and Big Buck machines are certainly getting the boot, which obviously does not bode well for Buzztime. We're certainly going to show up in force these next 10 days and do what we can to convince the new management BT ought to be retained. With a few cyclists and transit riders on the team, and the nearest sites being roughly equal (Bonasera, Boston Pizza) or a clear step downward (BWW, Schanks) in quality, there is no place we could migrate that would suit every player we have. It could be the end of our trivia world as we know it, and I don't feel fine

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/°v°\ • Every time Linux boots, a penguin gets its wings
I'm a solipsistic conspiracy theorist. I'm sure I must be up to something, and I won't stop until I find out what
Why not downgrade Plutonium to a dwarf element?

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liljol, still residing in a humble lil abode in Buzztime's Backyard, San Diego County, in The Horribly Site-Poor Golden State, California...

<--805 NTN Buzztime sites visited as of 11/13/2018...

F CUBS!!!!! FBOSOX!!!!!

FPDRES!!!!! FCHGRS!!!!!

You can tell Chef Noble that you have my word that, if he continues Buzztime at Rembrandt's, I shall, within 24 months, either drive from Virginia to NOtaBLE to thank him myself, or I will pay for you and a guest to do so for me. (And yes, I checked prices first.)

Rembrandt's gave me one of the finer welcomes of any Buzztime site at which I've ever played, and that was just the staff...I came in to early because of my travel schedule. I'm not going to let the place close without a gesture to help.

Here's to hoping that Rembrandt keeps trivia as I may visit as well someday.
On a side note, Mr. B's in Los Alamitos has also been sold and we're not certain if trivia will remain at the site. We are also trying to convince the new owner to keep it. Otherwise, we will be homeless.

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Middle age is when a broad mind and a slim waist exchange places.

*sigh*

Buzztime will be dropped, too. The last day of business before renovations commence shall be Thursday the 16th, hence our last gathering as a team will be next Wednesday

TANAKA and GOGETM (plus LILJOL via Facebook), thanks for the support, but unless you book flights really quickly, you'll have to pay us a visit at . . . well, we still have no consensus. But you folks, and anyone here on Scar, are welcome to come see us any time, and I'll figure out some place to have a little shindig (even if it's B-dubs)

RIP Rembrandt's
1987-2014

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/°v°\ • Every time Linux boots, a penguin gets its wings
I'm a solipsistic conspiracy theorist. I'm sure I must be up to something, and I won't stop until I find out what
Why not downgrade Plutonium to a dwarf element?

That's not good news, but not unexpected. It does seem to be a trend when new owners take over. Hopefully, you'll find a suitable replacement.

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Middle age is when a broad mind and a slim waist exchange places.

Yep, gotta say I'm going to miss the place, and not just because it was a 4-block walk from my house. Well, okay, mostly because it was a 4-block walk from my house, but also because the staff was pretty great, and the owners were generally good to us. We managed to win 1st place in our time zone in the Smartest Bar competition 3 times running (although we somehow ended up with 4 trophies) and didn't embarrass ourselves too badly in this years Sci-Files competition.

But at a (rumoured) cost of $1800/mo., I can't say I blame the new owners for dropping it ...

&

No.

Rembrandt's was the sixth-ranked Buzztime site for 2013 by Don Denton. That looks at performance in Premium Games--that looks at people turning out near suppertime, usually getting a meal or a heavy appetizer per patron along with 2-3 drinks. To rank that well in Premium Games, the site must be covering its Buzztime costs with the revenue received by Buzztime players. I visited; I read the menu; I know the mark-ups they used. PENGWN is a superstar, but he's not that good: Rembrandt's had a large, excellent team. That team more than covered the cost of the game.

It's not that Chef Noble didn't see Buzztime as cost-effective. That's a transparent excuse. Chef Noble didn't want Buzztime players in the vision he has for Rembrandt's. He didn't want riff-raff like...um...me. Or you, whomever's reading this. Or PENGWN, one of the nicest guys in Buzztime.

With all due respect, WB, and as a long-time regular member of that large, excellent team you mentioned, I have to No your "No."

Yes, the other members of my team are excellent players. (Kinda scary excellent, actually.) And it's a reasonably large group, I guess (I lost count at around 15 or 16). But we only really came out in force on Wednesdays, and to a lesser extent on Fridays. Even then, we'd usually get only about 8-10 players at a time (maybe 4-6 on Fridays). There were often a number of other bar regulars who would sign in, but they would have been there anyway, trivia or no.

That's not a hell of a lot of net new customers. And not all of us were particularly big drinkers (though I did my best to compensate for that, I'm only one man!), nor did we always order a whole lot of food. I would guess that on a monthly basis our table didn't usually account for much more than $2000 gross sales, pre-tax, pre-tip. I know food/beverage markups are huge, but I don't see how that justifies $1800/mo. expenses, even if you include the occasional curious traveler who wants to check out the little bar with the big scores.

WB, you're probably right that the new management dropped BT primarily because it didn't fit their vision of what the new bar should be. (They've apparently not made any attempt to retain the existing staff, so it does look like they want a new start.) But BT sure hasn't done a whole lot to be attractive enough to make them want to keep it, either.

&

P.S.: I mentioned bar regulars who'd be there anyway with or without trivia, but I think I should use this space for a shout-out to DEE and LO (who will probably never read this). They're not the best trivia players I've ever met, but they're among the most enthusiastic, and I'm pretty sure Rembrandt's wouldn't have kept BT on as long as they did without their support. Cheers, guys!

A similar thing happened to us at Boccavino, minus the ownership change. The place got popular enough as an Italian bistro, they no longer needed Buzztime as an aid to drawing in customers, because people would stand at the door and wait for a table. Alas for the group, the obvious business decision was to cut the now-needless expense. We understood and respected that, and I do believe some of the group still drops in to Boccavino from time to time

Rembrandt's is very likely going more uptown, and Chef Noble's name will draw in folks much more readily than Buzztime ever could. Heck, I daresay a gaggle of folks who come in to rearrange some furniture and shout numbers back and forth for an hour or more, occasionally wailing and gnashing their teeth, would be considered the riff-raff in such a setting

Anyways, I dropped in Saturday afternoon to take advantage of the table space in getting coin club stuff organized. While they still had the games running and one screen tuned in to trivia, the playmakers have been shipped out, and the mobile app would not register answers when logged in to Rembrandt's. Therefore, Wednesday was our last game there. I'm going to make one more Wednesday visit to see the place off, hopefully with a few of my trivia friends, and we'll see what the future holds for our ragtag band

You're right about one thing for sure, TANAKA: I'm not that good. Still suck at literature, theatre, and pop culture

_________________
/°v°\ • Every time Linux boots, a penguin gets its wings
I'm a solipsistic conspiracy theorist. I'm sure I must be up to something, and I won't stop until I find out what
Why not downgrade Plutonium to a dwarf element?

For the record, I have never gnashed. Ground, maybe, and possibly even chattered, but never gnashed.

But while I'm shouting out to folks who will never read this, I'd like to say thanks to the staff at Rembrandt's for holding our favourite table for us, even during Flames, Stamps, and (perhaps most contentiously) Riders games.

Anyway, see you Wednesday, PENGWYN.

&

If it really was 1800/mo, even CA dollars, the first thing they needed to do, about ten years ago, was renegotiate. The bar owners with whom I am familiar - single-site operations all - pay between 400 and 700. 1000 existed in my experience, but back in the day of 12000 players at peak times.

In fact a quick check shows latest full year revenue was $24mm, and site count just under 4000. Even if you imagine ZERO revenue from events, ads, ets that's a bit over $6000 per year per site. No doubt BWW gets a discount, but no doubt there is lots of non site-fee revenue too.

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

I really should re-emphasize, that was just the rumour we heard last week. It did sound a little high to me, but even at half that price, I can't see it being much of a moneymaker for a place like Rembrandt's.

In unrelated news, Melrose Pub in Calgary, which gave up on BT some time ago but carried it for years and was a very early adopter (it was something like NTN site #15 if memory serves), apparently closed abruptly this weekend. Long-time Calgary trivia players will doubtless have memories of the place; it was home to many trivia tournaments over the years and was in fact the first place I ever played NTN, back in the early '90's when I went under the handle E COLI.

&

That was also my 1st thought when I just read this thread. HOW in the hell was Rembrandt's paying $1800 a month?

Hardtimes pays US $440 a month for 20 boxes.

If any bar is still paying over $600, have someone call BT to get a better deal. Especially ones that are on the edge of dropping trivia. I know of 2 bars that were about to drop BT, called to do that and were offered a much better deal to keep it on a month to month basis, no year long contract.

This is obviously not the case with Rembrandt's owner change and fresh start. But renegotiating should be something to mention to the owners of bars that are talking about dropping BT.

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BUD - Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring MD
OC BUD - Grotto Pizza DE near Ocean City MD

LET'S GO ....Caps and Os!!!!

I don't see how any bar on the Repeat Feed keeps Buzztime. Sorry about your loss but Buzztime isn't very appealing, it is even less appealing to the bar owners, and many players should see this. The participation numbers show that, we who continue to support this crappy product are just delaying the impending fire sale.

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Buzztime is a company full of dumbshits.

That was a surprise, all right! So much for dropping in sometime soon to see the regulars, who likely got a rude awakening upon showing up to watch the latter two divisional games yesterday. No shortage of watering holes along 17th to fall back on, though

The site ID was 45, and the old P+ suffix was ABT. I remember that last bit mostly because EBT still has his account linked to Melrose. My first game there was in 2001, and I think I became a regular player in 2003. For years they ranked as the second-oldest site on the whole network, and were very good about promoting trivia and QB1 alike


That's good to know! Thank you, BUD. The four to seven hundred range mentioned by Rhino is on the low side of what I figured BT ought to cost

How often does Buzztime invoice for the service? I ask because that $1800 figure came from somewhere, and if it wasn't out of somebody's ass, perhaps it was from a quarterly invoice? Of course, that notion is only valid if Buzztime issues quarterly invoices . . .

The worst part about all this? Now that Calgary's down to 14 locations, I officially have site envy over LILJOL

_________________
/°v°\ • Every time Linux boots, a penguin gets its wings
I'm a solipsistic conspiracy theorist. I'm sure I must be up to something, and I won't stop until I find out what
Why not downgrade Plutonium to a dwarf element?

Possibly $800 was the actual figure...that's at least in the relevant range. The idea that it was a quarterly invoice for three months at $600 each also makes sense.



If you as a group provided $2,000 in monthly gross revenue strictly for Premium Games, that's a contribution to profit of about $1,300 a month strictly from those three big nights you tended to play together. There were many other games played at Rembrandt's outside those three nights. I understand your hesitance to assume a profit, but I really think that it's not even close. If I had the full stats I'd dig further into off-hour volume, but the $2,000 you suggest covers any reasonable cost of system by itself. It certainly covers $800. Or $600.

And we're not counting a lot of Buzztime play at other hours.

***

I guess this is why I raise the point: my economics education tells me that the 3,200-odd businesses subscribing to Buzztime are, on the whole, rational actors. Of those 3,200, Rembrandt's was in the top ten of Premium Game success. Premium Game success isn't the only metric of contribution, but it's not a bad one. We're not talking about a better-than-average mark in that metric--we're talking leadership. If any sites were making money from Buzztime, Rembrandt's was among them.

Another metric is game play. Rembrandt's site page is still up. I count 7,585 games played in the last six months. At a modest two dollars contribution to profit per player per game, that's $15,170, or $2,528 per month.

If Chef Noble threw away Buzztime, it's because he had a vision of a restaurant with a different clientele.

***

But I do thank you for your kindness in disagreeing with me, Ampersand.

PS Rembrandt's Buzztime page:

http://www.buzztime.com/site/33090/games

I couldn't agree more. It sucks that we get the chop, but we're far from the biggest fish available for that frying pan

I bet the video lottery terminals (VLTs) are getting removed, too, because they don't fit that vision, and those are all but a slam-dunk moneymaker

_________________
/°v°\ • Every time Linux boots, a penguin gets its wings
I'm a solipsistic conspiracy theorist. I'm sure I must be up to something, and I won't stop until I find out what
Why not downgrade Plutonium to a dwarf element?

... Aaand in further Calgary news (might as well keep this all in one thread), apparently my old stomping grounds, the Red Fox in the downtown Ramada, dropped Buzztime earlier this week. It was a dark and dingy little pub (well, if truth be told, it wasn't really that dark), but it was my home base for many years, and arguably the site where the Boccavino/Rembrandt's team first "gelled", so to speak. (That sounds kind of gross, but it befits the place ...)

I believe this brings us down to 13 locations in Calgary, none even remotely close to the downtown core. It wasn't that long ago we had over 50.

&

I will be there in July, let me know if you gel at a new place. Bonasera is good any night but Tuesday,their wing night is crazy.

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Work, the curse of the drinking class.

No matter how hard you push the envelope, it's still stationery.
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