Restaurant Music

As my friends at Casa Mia know well, I’ve got strong opinions about music played in restaurants. Admittedly it’s a hard thing to get right: too much Perry Como and you risk losing the young rockers, too much Bedouin Soundclash and you loose the suits. Personally I would be a happy man if I never had to listen to Andrea Bocelli again for as long as I live.

So here’s my proposed solution: each restaurant should have its own last.fm group and invite customers to become members of the group (here’s a group I’ve created for Casa Mia as an experiment; feel free to join it).

Then all that’s left to do is to stream the group’s radio station into the restaurant; in theory, while every track won’t appeal to every customer, at least every customer’s taste will be factored into the playlist.

Comments

Dan James's picture
Dan James on December 19, 2008 - 15:11 Permalink

I think you’ll just end up with Ocean 100’s playlist.

Peter Rukavina's picture
Peter Rukavina on December 19, 2008 - 15:18 Permalink

You underestimate the richness of the customer base. (I hope).

Paul Lopes's picture
Paul Lopes on December 19, 2008 - 16:02 Permalink

You know I’ll be adding Andrea Bocelli to my playlist.

Jevon's picture
Jevon on December 19, 2008 - 16:29 Permalink

I was at a wine bar last night and it was a lounge version of Material Girl that finally drove me out.

Mehrnoosh Aghdassi's picture
Mehrnoosh Aghdassi on December 20, 2008 - 02:01 Permalink

That’s a great idea, looking forward to it.
Noosh

benxamin's picture
benxamin on December 20, 2008 - 16:14 Permalink

In the American Midwest, distances between good restaurants (and clubs, if any) are so large as to be prohibitive. If you go out, you’re lucky if you get to change venues. So, any restaurant with a bar becomes a club as the night rolls on.
I used to manage a fine dining hotel restaurant, and got to tune the playlist just right. The restaurant closes at 10pm, but that’s when the bar picks up. The late diners would finish-up main dining with some Verve jazz remixes and segue into extended remixes of disco covers or dance punk like !!!. At 1:30am, before bar close at 2, we’d switch to smoky-lounge groove down-tempo stuff. It also kept the crowd under control, too. No Stairway to Heaven. EVAR