Today marks the start of Winterlicious, a once great event in the city of Toronto. In it’s early stages you used to be able to go and get a great deal at some high end restaurants around the city that would typically cost a lot more. Over the years instead of making it affordable for customers to experience these “great” restaurants, I believe it turned into somewhat of a joke. Instead of getting a deal on your meal, you basically got a free dessert, smaller portions and shitty service. Here are my reasons why I no longer attend Winterlicious.
UPDATE: After some thought, I believe this post is more directed towards the restaurants charging the higher prices ($35-$45/dinner). There are some good deals to be found on the list of restaurants participating in Winterlicious, but you need to do your research.
1) Price – When Winterlicious began, the most expensive restaurants were $35. This has since increased to $45 yet many of the restaurants and menu variations have remained the same. While $10 doesn’t seem like much, going from $70 to $90 for a table of 2 before even ordering a drink makes a good deal go bad very quickly. When you really do the math comparing the regular menus to the Wnterlicious menu of many of the participating restaurants, you will notice that in many cases it works out to you getting a free dessert (if that). As someone that never orders dessert anyway, I don’t care.
2) Service – In all my Winterlicious experiences over the years (and from what others tell me), the quality of service at these restaurants appears to drop drastically during this week of savings. It is as if the waiters think because you are there for Winterlicious you are cheap and probably won’t tip what their normal clientele would. For that reason they give much more attention to tables not partaking in the Winterlicious menu.
3) Restaurant Division – One of the funniest things I have heard over the years during Winterlicious is restaurants that run out of “Winterlicious tables”. It is almost like they are saying this side of the restaurant is for the cheap people and this side is for our quality paying customers. If you are going to offer Winterlicious it should be for the entire restaurant, not just a special area.
4) The Waiters Hate It – Since Winterlicious does draw a crowd that is looking for a deal it means less money in the waiters’ pocket at the end of the night. I have heard countless stories of customers who come in to a high-end restaurant for Winterlicious and drink water all night long. Sure, there is nothing saying they can’t do this, but chances are these same people aren’t coming out to the restaurant at other times of the year and doing this. Just because an owner of a restaurant wants to participate, doesn’t mean the staff do.
5) Portion Sizes – Ever notice when eating from a Winterlicious menu if you look around the restaurant the other table’s plates seem to have more on them? They probably do! I’ve experienced it and heard from many others that the portion for a meal seemed to shrink quite a bit while featured on a Winterlicious menu.
6) Menu Substitutions – Winterlicious was supposed to be about experiencing a more expensive restaurant to see if you would want to come back at full prices, but now you can no longer do this. The reason why? Menu items aren’t always the same as their regular menu. Since I am always trying to see how much of a savings a restaurant is actually offering I commonly find that Winterlicious menu items don’t exist on the regular menu. These items are just added because they have cheaper ingredients allowing the restaurant to turn a once unprofitable time into a profitable one. For example, let’s take a look at the Bymark Winterlicious menu. Here are the appetizers:
Bymark Winterlicious Appetizers
Now, let’s go take a look at their regular menu to see how much these cost normally:
Bymark Regular Menu Appetizers
Other than the house cured gravlax, I can’t seem to find anything else on the menu!
7) Menu Choices – With a lot of the restaurants in Winterlicious I find that they only have 1 thing that I would order from their “special” menu. If they run out of this item, what seemed like a good deal is not so great if you can’t eat what you wanted.
8) Many of these restaurants run Group Buys all the time – The final reason why I don’t bother with Winterlicious is many of the particpating restaurants run group deals all of the time for way better savings. Just look on sites like Groupon Now and you will see several of the restaurants in the Winterlicious list.
While there still is the odd restaurant that will give you a great deal during Winterlicious, the point of this post is to say do your research! When you really break it down, many of these restaurants aren’t offering a great deal and you are much better off going to them at any other time of the year when you can actually experience the quality and level of service they are known for.
Note: This article also applies to Summerlicious ;)
Many good valid points Graham. The main reason why I don’t bother with Winterlicious is because you usually don’t get any of the yummy options of their regular menu. In addition to this, Winterlicious has grown so much in popularity, it’s sometimes impossible to get a chance at a fine dining establishment.
Thanks Margaret for the comment!
The best deals I find are during lunch at some of these places and the very cheap menus listed. The high-end ones I would rather pay the extra money and go during regular times then go during Winterlicious.
As somebody who worked as hostess at one of the high end restaurants charging $45 I can say some of your points are valid but some are misguided. It is true that “in general” winterlicious clientele do not tip well if at all. But the main reason the service goes down is that you go from having 50 guests on an average weeknight to 250. Its not that most servers don’t care. many take pride in their work and enjoy it but are overworked during winterlicious, and some customers are down right rude when it is crowded and busy and they have to wait a little. yes we saved tables for “regular” clientele, but if you have ever worked at one of these places you realize these customers come every week and expect you to save their table, and expect special treatment, thats why they pay such high prices, to feel special so to speak. High end clientele are often quite demanding about how they should be treated! If you don’t do this, you will hear about it and possibly even lose their business. And trust me, when they are buying $1000 bottles of wine, you aim to please them. you do give them special treatment because they are the ones who come back, and lets face it, it is a business, and you need them to keep coming back when everyone from winterlicious is gone. Sure you could argue winterlicious clients should get the same treatment, but unfortunately that’s one of the things lost when you have so many clients in a night when the restaurant is not used to that capacity on a regular basis. Also, if you take away the prestige and make it an “accessible” restaurant, you change the kind of restaurant you have entirely. the high price is not just about the food. As a hostess, I had notes on who people were, what their kids names were, what they liked and didn’t liked so the next time you came in I could print that note for the server and they ask you how your son is doing at u of t. The customer is then amazed that you remember them and their kid. That’s the kind of service people pay for. The banquette table is going to go to the people who come week after week. But you can also bet that if its not being used by a regular costumer, it will be used for winterlicious clients. It’s not like any tables sit empty. winterlicious clintele tend to come twice a year and you never see them again. Add in fact people show up with extra persons or take 3 hours to eat and now you end up making others wait longer for tables they reserved. As a hostess I would seat a young student couple at one of our least favourite tables simply because they are less likely to complain and ask to be moved. If they did complain of course I would move them. The portions I agree are smaller, but you still save. An average entree was about $45, now you get a smaller entree sure, but you also get an appetizer and a dessert. Doesn’t seem like much? Well these items run over $10 each on the regular menu. Also, I’ve had summerlicious and winterlicious at a number of restaurants. The quality of the food is still excellent. The fact that its not on menu doesn’t mean they went for something cheaper, it may mean they picked something they could make a lot of really quickly, because cooking quality food for 250 people in a matter of a few hours is no easy feat. It’s also common for these menus to change on a regular basis, and often the items are on the real menu at one time or another. And the idea isn’t just for customers to try high end restaurants for cheap – quick way for a restaurant to lose money. It was also designed to have these restaurants attract new clientele – give them a taste for a good deal then they come back again and again and you make up for the money spent. but as already mentioned people end up just coming those two times a year, so the restaurant has nothing to gain by keeping the prices low because really they are not gaining any new clients. That being said – when people say to me they’d like to try the restaurant I worked at and that they will go for winterlicious etc. I tell them they’re better off paying full price and going on a regular night because part of what you pay for is the atmosphere, and attention from servers, and that’s what you don’t get during winterlicious. So I would agree, winterlicious isn’t really “worth it” but I think some of your comments were reading into reasons why and making it all malicious and negative when its not that simple. Maybe a better solution is actually to accept less reservations so the restaurant can manage and give the time they need to each customer…however since wintlicious sells out so quick as it is (Fridays and Saturdays often weeks in advance) I feel like people would just complain about that too.
Hi J.D.,
Thanks for the great comment. I tend to exaggerate things a bit to get my point accross and as you’ve so eloquently pointed out here, I definitely have done so.
It is definitely good to hear from the other side of this, which leads me to wonder why these restaurants do it in the first place? If the customers never return and it is having a negative impact on their regular operations, why not just get rid of it altogether?
I completely understand why things like service, and quantities go down as you mention but I don’t think the people promoting the Winterlicious event do enough to point these things out. Instead, they make it seem like you will go to these restaurants just as you would any other night of the week but instead of paying $45 for just your entree, you will get much more.
It is for that reason why I took a stronger approach with how I wrote this article, but I agree with everything you have said!
Thanks for taking the time to give the readers of this blog the insight into the other side of Winterlicious.
Best,
Graham
Hey G,
Great read. Loved it.
I’ve never participated in any of the “-icious” events. I’ve never understood it.
I have friends who love the event and go every year. I wonder what their thoughts on your post would be? I’ll share it on FB and see.
Have a great day.
C.
Thanks Christine! Appreciate it!!
Don’t get me wrong, there are good deals to be found during these events, you just have to look hard to find them.
I appreciate the honesty in this post and in the above comments from fellow readers. I personally am not a fan of Winterlicious/Summerlicious and more often than not find the set menus unappealing to me personally. There are many restaurants that I frequent throughout the year but avoid during Winterlicious because it can be too busy and overall not what I can expect during any other time. I also usually have a favourite dish at a restaurant I like going back to for, which tends not to be on the Winterlicious menu anyways.
Last year I had some friends go check out a restaurant during Winterlicious that I had been recommending they try for months. They messaged me after to tell me they thought I was crazy and that the portions were small, the food was cold and they felt rushed. I assured them this was not the norm and probably because they went during, and for, Winterlicious; which I wouldn’t have recommended. They didn’t see why it should make a difference when or why they went and almost seemed offended. They are right, I can’t argue that – but I still can’t help but blame Winterlicious. Had they gone a week before or after and paid the regular prices and ate off the regular menu, I really believe they would have left happy.
There rarely is the perfect solution to a problem, because like J.D. said above, different groups of people will always complain, like… ” I can’t get a reso” or “why is this or that restaurant not participating anymore? Are they too good?” “Winterlicious draws only a student crowd” I’ve heard many different complaints over the years and you can’t please everyone. Having said that – maybe this event has just run its course.
I have to agree with many of your observations. The only time Winterlicious seems to work out is if I go with coworkers for lunch. It makes things easier in that everyone is paying the same, there are usually enough options to satisfy varied dietary requirements and the venue is nicer than we would otherwise enjoy. I don’t participate with my friends/partner.