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Here’s some food for thought: Bistro lets you name your price
Pay what you want for dinner? It’s true!
HERMITAGE, Pa. — Has the recession taken such a bite out of your budget that you hardly ever go out for nice dinners anymore?
Well, put away the pork and beans and that can opener. Dust off your wallet and head over to Sghetti’s Italian Bistro for a good meal in a nice atmosphere that will cost you — as much as you want to pay?
Yep! You can afford to eat out again.
“[The recession] is sad, for senior citizens and young families,” said Sghetti’s owner Eugene Razzano last week at the restaurant at 3200 S. Hermitage Road (Pa. Route 18). “So if we can do something to empower people ...”
What they’ve done is prepare a suggested range of prices for dinners, but they’re only suggestions, assured Razzano’s son, Dominick.
Appetizers range from $3 to $7. Pasta dishes range from $6 to $12. Chicken dishes are $7 to $13. Combination platters are $8 to $14, and seafood meals, $9 to $15.
They would like to get from $3 to $7 for flat-bread pizzas, $5 to $11 for gourmet pizzas, $5 to $9 for specialty salads and $5 to $9 for panini sandwiches.
You can follow those suggested prices, or: Pay whatever you want. Soups and desserts are included in the deal, though you’ll have to pay full price for alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages. You’ll still be expected to tip your server, too.
Is Razzano worried that people will pay so far under the suggested prices that he’ll end up losing money?
Maybe a little. He’s only committing to the deal, which began Wednesday at 4 p.m. and does not include lunch, for one week at a time.
He likes to believe, however, that most people are going to be fair about what he says is an idea that some European restaurants employ, though he doesn’t know of that many trying it here in the United States.
“There will be people who aren’t fair,” he said. “But for as many people who’d pay two cents to beat you out of something, there are that many people who’d pay above and beyond.”
Dominick Razzano and hostess Terri Basham declared opening night Wednesday a success, with Dominick saying that only 1 person out of about 60 underpaid by leaving $2.
Basham said the restaurant was twice as busy as normal, and there were a lot of people in who weren’t regulars.
Razzano said he’s hoping the deal stimulates business so that even if his check balances go down, his revenue goes up. Guest frequency and revenues have declined, he said.
One group of friends — Judy Jennings and Sharon Ference of Hermitage and Nancy Fizet of Masury — dined Thursday on their favorites: roasted garlic scampi for Fizet and Ference, and a chicken salad for Jennings. The women said they meet for dinner at Sghetti’s once every few months, but might take advantage of the deal by coming more often. They were planning to pay “at the high end” for their food.
“I think more area businesses should try this,” said Vicki Langietti, who lives near Pittsburgh but traveled north to go to dinner with her daughter, Jackie Brown of Hermitage, a Butler County Community College student at Linden Pointe.
It’s an especially attractive deal for students, they pointed out.
If the promotion works, Razzano said, he will continue to offer it until the economy turns around.
starmack@vindy.com