BOUNTY FOR CUSTOMERS
Sunday, June 21, 2009 12:44 AM
Strip clubs in Las Vegas have long paid bounties to cabdrivers who deliver customers, but Rick's didn't grasp the payments' importance when it bought the former Scores strip club in September. By February, the Las Vegas club was registering only $257,000 a month in sales.
Moving to reclaim its share of the slumping tourist trade, Rick's boosted its payments to as much as $100 a customer from the usual $30. By April, it was notching nearly $1.9 million in monthly sales in Las Vegas. The club still lost money that month, because it paid the cabbies about $1 million, but the loss was smaller than in previous months.
Eric Langan, Rick's chief executive, blames the bounty inflation on other clubs' recession-induced desperation. "The pie got smaller, and everyone started trying to steal each other's piece," he says.
-Wonder if any other cities operate this way...
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