New Year's Reprieve

January 3, 2006’s “New Year’s Peeve” blog entry, a full feature devoted to the debacle at South End Brewery’s annual year-end celebration, generated the most email response in my three year stint with Charlotte.com. One hundred percent of the reader replies agreed with my position, echoing the opinion that year nine was a year to forget.

Certainly, not all revelers were miserable, but the lack of any dissenting vote was a good indicator that many investors in the evening were not paid a fair sum of party consideration in return.

General manager Steve Vocke, a five year veteran of the restaurant and microbrewery chain, recently agreed to a brief interview to set the record straight. No, we are not getting refunds, but his sincerity was genuine and year ten has a plan of action set to avoid any repeat of this performance.

Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

What went wrong?

It was like a perfect storm of people. Probably forty percent of our clientele were N.C. State fans. Ninety percent of them purchased tickets in advance and the other ten percent just showed up at the door.

How did they know about this event? Did your Raleigh location promote it?

Not a single bit. Not at all. I have no idea how they [N.C. State fans] knew about it. The Raleigh restaurant wasn’t advertising ours at all.

How many tickets did you sell?

925. Previous years it’s been 750. We got to 750 on Thursday before New Year’s and I said ‘Alright, we gotta figure something out. We’ve got a tent, and nine hundred would be perfect.’ And that was our goal. We got to 925 when people showed up without tickets and said they were with five other friends who already had tickets. What killed us was the overflow of people coming in that said they had reservations and we didn’t have any record of them at all.

What is the capacity of South End Brewery?

900 without tables. We were within our fire marshal occupancy. Total at the end of the night was right under 1100 [tent occupancy included].

When you co-sponsor an event such as this one with promoter John Lineberger, who is in charge?

John and myself. I take full responsibility for the night. John doesn’t control the staff whatsoever. All he does is emails and promotion. He has a huge database and was in touch with the Charlotte Sports Connection. We had no idea this party was going to be this big.

Was anything different in this year’s organization of the event that was different from years before?

Absolutely not. John and I have worked together for five years. I’ve only had one complaint in five years; one woman said we didn’t have closed captioning on the TV and she was deaf.

Were there any complaints that evening this year?

Yes. We dealt with one person on her way out and I gave her my card and we got everything straightened out. She was very appreciative of the call.

Were there any reported problems with staffing?

We had a hard time getting the bar stocked up. If I knew this was going to be a thousand person party, I would have added another bar, but honestly, I don’t know where I would have put it at that point. We’ve never had to deal with a crowd that size before.

Did you finally turn people away at the door?

Yes. There was one point early in the night, around 10:30, and I’m looking in to the restaurant, thinking, ‘we’re crowded, look out, and there’s still a line a football field long in the parking lot, and I’m thinking this is scary.’

Do you think the drink lines were too long?

Honestly though, you only want to serve so many drinks. I don’t mean that financially, but from a safety standpoint. Anytime you have an open bar situation, and people are going to drink as much as they want to, people get sick too early. To a point, you have to have lines. You’ve got to be responsible. You give people carte blanche ability to drink, and it’s dangerous.

Let’s talk about how you plan to prepare for next year. Are there any changes planned for admission?

We’ve already established an opportunity for people to purchase their tickets online. The phone calls, the calling to order your tickets, people saying they bought tickets and they didn’t buy tickets, that’s eliminated. People will print their confirmation and show it to us.

Restroom facilities?

We will add port-o-potties but I don’t know the exact location where it’s going to be. I want to make sure it’s convenient enough for everybody to get to but it doesn’t become a stinkin’ mess. We’re going to put up a heated double tent for the CIAA’s and experiment there.

Do you plan to sell a similar number of tickets?

Not at all. If we do a double tent we’ll consider 900. We might have seven bars and 18 bartenders. We’ll convert the entire pizza bar to serve drinks. Additionally, we might hand out some beers to people that might have to wait in line. We’re not going to do wristbands since we’re checking ID’s at the door.