Maybe you’d like to start a night out with a roasted-beet salad at Loie Fuller’s on Providence’s West Side, followed by a wood-fired pizza at Temple Downtown and a few Texas Chain Saw Margaritas at Rick’s Roadhouse.
But what if you don’t want to have to worry about driving from place to place?
Well, Eric Weiner, president and CEO of All Occasion Transportation, hopes that enough people are looking for such a convenience. This month, his company is unveiling its new multi-restaurant-in-one-night program, “Providence Chauffeured Dine Around.”
With 15 Providence restaurants that have signed on to participate, Weiner has put together a “menu” of sorts. Customers that want to participate – a group of 10, for example, would fit the base cost of $79 per person – choose between four and six restaurants and pick out a menu item from each. Then let All Occasion handle the transportation and reservations.
The program, which is set to run through March, was born from worries about the slow winter market for hospitality, Weiner said recently.
“We do mostly corporate and group transportation. For many retail groups, the months around the holidays may be busy, but as corporate travel slows down, we slow down,” Weiner said. “And our restaurant and hotel partners are looking at the winter and seeing it as soft.”
In the 18 years that he’s run All Occasion in Rhode Island, Weiner’s created a relationship with local restaurateurs. “And, as a group, all of us have obviously seen a downturn in the economy,” he said.
The program got its unofficial start a few months ago, when one of Weiner’s college friends was coming to town from Denver. Weiner didn’t know which restaurant to bring him to – there had been so many additions to the restaurant scene since their days at Johnson & Wales University.
So Weiner, with his local fleet of about 25 vehicles, decided he didn’t have to choose. He would just make reservations at 10 different places for different times.
“So over eight hours, we went to 10 restaurants that weren’t here last time he was in Providence four years ago,” Weiner said. “So we spent about 35 minutes in each restaurant.”
After he decided to create the customer program, Weiner asked each restaurant to forward a few menu items from which customers can choose ahead of time – that adds to the smooth transition from place to place. Also, All Occasion’s specialty is not in pairing food and wine, he said.
“For this program, it’s basically just small appetizer tastings at each restaurant,” Wiener said. “We really wanted to keep this more of a cocktail-hour atmosphere.”
There are a few target markets – small offices and groups of friends visiting Rhode Island during the holidays – that Weiner hopes will pounce on the idea. “We saw that this would be a great opportunity for us to generate some new revenue,” he said. “But, more importantly, it will give our customers an opportunity to experience multiple restaurants that they may not have been able to.”
So far, inquiries and reservations have been piling up for the holiday season, Weiner said.
Weiner decided not to set up private rooms in the restaurants so that customers could enjoy the culture of each stop. “The program is available Sunday through Thursday and what we’ve found the value to be is that it’s not nearly as exciting or fun with a private room,” he said. Instead, some restaurants offer either a reserved table or a section of the bar area.
Aside from that night’s group, there are other benefits for each restaurant, too. “The idea is that maybe for some people, who don’t go out that often, if they go out to six different restaurants and have small tastes like this they can decide which one they want to go back to for a full meal later,” Weiner said. •
