Cagin' Cajun Cash

Making the Best Out of Increased Mardi Gras Traffic


By Steven Bevilaqua




Mardi Gras means different things to different people only if those people aren't in the nightclub and bar industry. For the people within the industry, the celebration is nothing less than a weeklong chance to rake in non-stop profits.


If anything, Mardi Gras can and by all means should do justice to the old revenue bracket on the books. This is a holiday where the foundation was literally built by the idea of excessive eating and drinking.


It's a week where New Orleans, the city that is nearly synonymous with Mardi Gras, almost packs out more than 30,000 metro area hotels with party-going bead throwers and chest-bearing bead catchers. After hitting powerhouse parades such as Endymion and the Rex, bars will be needed for patrons to converge upon and converge they will.


Controlling the Crash

Theresa O'Rourke, director of marketing at 115 Bourbon Street in Chicago, says she has to close the doors to the club before 9 p.m. almost every single night during Mardi Gras. In the community, the southern outskirt of Chicago, 115 Bourbon Street is well known for its Mardi Gras theme, not only during the week of the actual celebration, but throughout the year.

Naturally, people flock into the 40,000-square-foot club for one of its biggest parties of the year. But, O'Rourke says, to keep their reputation of solid service during Mardi Gras, they close doors before the club reaches capacity. She says, "We don't ever go to capacity cause we want our servers to be able to work through the crowd and we want everyone to be able to get a drink."


For crowd control at Pat O'Briens, what many consider the center of the center of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, there is a small fee. Shelly Waguespack, vice president of Pat O'Briens, says they monitor the crowd by charging for a ticket or a pass into the club. Once inside, the ticket can be used as a coupon for drinks.


"It's not a cover charge, you just prepay your drink basically. It kind of slows the crowd down a bit. And we have to keep count at the door, to make sure we're under the numbers we're supposed to be in," Waguespack says.


It also doesn't hurt to be in such a tried and true Mardi Gras town. Waguespack says Mardi Gras would not happen in New Orleans without the police department. In other cities, where the police are not quite as trained in the ways of the party, things get out of hand but in the Big Easy, they never rise above a contained chaos. Waguespack says, "Our policemen know how to handle crowds. They know how to be easy and tough —they're just incredible."



It's Good to Have Options

At 115 Bourbon Street, there is no distinction made between customers. Basically, any and all customers are good customers. They're all there for the same reason, so the basic philosophy behind a club so large is to have options for everyone. During Mardi Gras week, 115 Bourbon Street utilizes all three of the live performance rooms within the club. Two of the rooms feature performances from live bands and the third room typically features various DJs. By having celebrated performers hitting on different demographics in each room, 115 Bourbon Street customers range from 21 to 50 in age, O'Rourke says.


Waguespack says there is a steady flow of people coming in an out of Pat O'Briens, too, a good amount of the customers coming in just for drinks and then leaving immediately to join the outdoor party. They also have private facilities set up which generally can host a few parties.


Gettin' Jeauced

People try to cover Mardi Gras with parades and masks, masquerades and funny costumes, even king cakes with plastic babies inside, but the essence of Mardi Gras is without question the contents of the party's collective cocktail glass.


At 115 Bourbon Street, traditional drinks aren't 86'ed entirely, but they aren't the featured drinks. O'Rourke says you'll definitely see people carrying the Hurricanes and the Blue Lagoons around, but the specialty is their very own Gator Juice. Gator Juice is a Jim Beam-based cocktail with green tint added. At $4, it remains 115 Bourbon Street's best-seller during the Mardi Gras celebration.


Waguespack says the drink specials at Pat O'Briens stay the same throughout year for the most part, but the key to keeping customers happy with so much traffic is to simplify. The food menu is cut down to around three items so the kitchen staff is able to keep up with the increased traffic. Waguespack says, "We don't change the drink menu at all, we just cut the food menu down. Hurricanes and all the drinks are consistent." NCB