Contest: Best Duds at Wine Riot NYC
A bunch of people have been asking about the location swap for the Boston Wine Riot and we want to be 100% honest with all of you who do want to know more of the details, keep reading for a short version or longer version of the story!
The Short Version: Last October during Wine Riot at the Cyclorama, there was an incident where 100 people who bought tickets to the Saturday night Wine Riot were not allowed in by security because security claimed we had reached capacity. After refunding 100 people at the event, my team and I spent numerous days carefully going over every ticketing detail. Our verdict was that Second Glass did not oversell the event. In fact, we undersold it by 50 tickets. I have three definitive sources of information that point to a miscount at the door by the Cyclorama hired security company. Mistakes happen, I understand that, but it’s how you deal with them that counts.
That’s why Morgan and I reached out to Boston Center for the Arts (the Cyclorama’s parent organization) management to discuss the situation. To our surprise, when we met with BCA management they categorically dismissed our claims and refused to even look at the sources and information we had prepared. On top of that, I was told there was nothing that could have been done before, during or after the event to change the results. Further more, they did not give us solutions to ensure this would not happen again in the future. In short, the security company has an exclusive contract with the Cyclorama and what they say goes. End of story.
Incredibly frustrated, Morgan and I both agreed there was no way we would hold another Wine Riot at the Cyclorama. It was not fair to those of you who had to stand outside and wait, even with we a refund. The situation was completely unacceptable by our standards and we are doing everything in our power to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
After touring five US cities and looking at dozens of event spaces, we now only work with event teams that listen to our needs and value customer service. For that reason, we are changing the location of Wine Riot. The new venue we chose has been incredibly accommodating, helpful and overall, a pleasure to work with. The space is roughly the same size, attendance will not change and we will have the same amount of wine. We are choosing to work with an organization that will not leave our paying customers standing in the cold and is also a really cool event space with historical significance.
While the situation at the door was out of our hands, we do have the opportunity to work with different vendors that will treat us fairly and listen to our feedback. That is why we are moving locations. I welcome any feedback and again, apologize to those who were not let into the last Wine Riot.
For more details on the situation, continue reading, but I look forward to seeing you at Wine Riot.
The Longer Story
We signed a contract with the Boston Center for the Arts to rent out the Cyclorama space for two full days. The contract stated that we were allowed 1,100 attendees on Saturday night. The BCA does a bulk count of 100 staff and vendors leaving 1,000 attendees that we can sell tickets to. We had done two previous events with the BCA and had no problems with ticket count in the past.
Selling Tickets
We at Second Glass take extreme measures to guarantee we do not oversell the event. For this Wine Riot we used EventBrite to sell our tickets. They have a system of e-ticketing that has worked in the past but also fantastic tracking software that allows us to only sell a certain number of tickets. We set the number of tickets available and checked it religiously - multiple times per day as the event approached.
We even used EventBrite to book our press, comps, contest winners and the free session our volunteers get to attend. Nearly every single person was given an electronic ticket. The exceptions included a few people to whom we sold traditional paper tickets either at wine stores or events. There were fewer than 30 paper tickets sold for Saturday night and we recorded each ticket sold.
At the end of every single day in the week leading up to Wine Riot we counted the total number of tickets sold. On the day of the event, Morgan and I went over the math and recounted how many tickets we had sold. We determined that there were still about 100 tickets unsold. Not wanting to take any chances, we ended the online sales and prepared to sell 56 tickets at the door, leaving us a buffer of about 50 tickets.
The Headcount Problem Arises
About an hour into the event, the hired security team of the Boston Center for the Arts informed us that we were approaching capacity. Looking around, Wine Riot was kicking into full gear and we knew we had just moved hundreds of people quickly into the event. But there was one glitch; the scanners provided by EventBrite were only scanning 1 in every 3 tickets.
The scanners were a problem throughout the day and we knew going into Saturday night there might be a problem so we prepared a backup plan. We would collect every single person’s printed out e-ticket and for those without the paper print out, we could check them off a list (after checking a photo ID) on the EventBrite iPhone App.
We collected paper tickets and checked away but soon after the initial warning from security we were informed the event was at capacity. Knowing full well that we had undersold the event, this was a major problem and Morgan and I quickly decided what to do as a line of confused, paying customers formed outside.
Issuing Refunds
Morgan and I decided to refund everyone in line the full ticket price, mark their ticket, and if they chose to wait until someone left, let them in at no cost. What started with 10-20 people quickly grew to 80 and then 100. Morgan and I cleared the registers, maxed out the Second Glass debit card and emptied our personal bank accounts. All tolled we shelled out close to $5,000 cash in about an hour. We did this first, without knowing the exact cause of the headcount problem in effort to make sure you our customers were happy.
Collecting and Reconciling Data
While this was going on, I gave a headcount clicker to two members of the Second Glass team and told them to guesstimate the number of people in the Cyclorama. After a 15 minute sprint, they estimated between 800-850 people. Not wanting to upset the security guards any more than we already had, I decided that I would stand outside for the rest of the night with two of my team members, one of them is a trained bouncer. We waited until the last person entered on the “one in, one out” system and security confirmed we were at capacity of 1,000 people.
The three of us then began counting every person that left the building, individually, but reconciling every 15-20. This took two solid hours but we had a clicker and the number when we were finished was 881. That wasn’t too far off from our original count.
The second source was wristbands. We order a different color wristband for each session of Wine Riot and Saturday night was blue dinosaurs. After the show was over, I came back inside from counting attendees and Morgan showed me the box of wristbands. We had only ordered 1,000 and there were 49 wristbands left. We called the company on Monday and they assured us that they send exactly the number of bands ordered.
I asked to see the security team’s clickers and they read 1,102 people entered for the whole night. If this actually happened, how did we have 49 wristbands left when the box only contained 1,000?
Note: The wristband number does not match the clicker because I started counting when the last person entered and we were exactly at capacity. We had 75 people who were refunded, then waited in line and eventually entered and got wristbands. When the last of these people entered, I started counting the people coming out.
But the kicker is the printed e-ticket tally that took us three solid days to count. My team and I went through 2,000+ printed e-tickets that we collected over the weekend and organized the Saturday evening ones. We pulled down the data about the people we checked in via the iPhone App and compiled it all together.
This is how the numbers work, according to our records:
716 Printed E-Tickets
83 Check-ins with EventBrite iPhone App
75 Refunded and re-entered
56 Door sales
13 Misc Sponsor tickets
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943 total people entered Saturday night
That’s TOTAL! According to our records, we never didn’t even had 1,000 people all night. That is consistent with the wristbands (951 used - some people thought it was too tight so we gave them a different one), that is consistent with my door count of 881 being the “so called capacity” + 75 “one in, one outs,” = 956 which is +/- 13, entirely possible while trying to count hundreds of people leaving at once.
Plus, it’s consistent with the 966 tickets we sold to Saturday night, which senior EventBrite employees have confirmed is the accurate count (not everyone that buys a ticket shows up).
What Followed Mattered Most
I spent countless hours going over these numbers, recounting the tickets, and looking for any and every possible explanation for what happened. Mistakes happen and not wanting to accuse anyone of anything before talking through the situation, I emailed the Monday after Wine Riot and made to make an appointment with the BCA management. It took a few weeks to get the meeting date and time scheduled.
The meeting finally happened a few weeks after the incident and to Morgan and my surprise, they would not even read over the documents I brought showing my ticket numbers. Instead, I was told, very frankly, there was nothing I could have done before, during or after the event to show there was an error on their part. While we were not blamed, I was told repeatedly that the security “house count” is the only number they care about.
Since we had another date on hold with them, I asked how we could prevent this from happening in the future. I suggested that I might install a security camera and point it at the door so next time there would be no arguing over how many people entered.
This was shut down as soon as the words left my mouth. I was told, quite forcefully, that I would never be allowed to install or even setup a camera that focused on the door. (This is in direct conflict with their filming policy, which allows us to record video in the space.) I was shown absolutely no system employed by security for making sure the headcount was accurate. On top of that, the BCA has an exclusive contract with this security company, so we can’t even work with a different one (of the ten venues I have toured across the country, not a single venue has an exclusive security contract).
Morgan and I left the meeting beat down. Not only were we out $5,000 in cash but we also knew we couldn’t go back to the BCA again. We immediately started looking for new event spaces but this is not an easy task in Boston.
Boston is a city filled with 500 person spaces but few with a 1,000 person capacity. Also, we need to bring in our own wine and many spaces have an exclusive food and beverage supplier.
Most event spaces need to be booked 6-12 months in advance and we were behind so we had to push a week back from our usual, Patriot’s Day Weekend. We wanted to explain why we are switching locations for Wine Riot. We think the Cyclorama is a beautiful event space too, but leaving customers in the cold and not even being willing to talk about it is completely unacceptable. Again, the new location is roughly the same size as the Cyclorama, the attendance will not change and we will have the same amount of wine.
Nonetheless, these are just minor setbacks. We have a new location booked, the booths are almost sold out and tickets are moving! We can’t wait for Wine Riot Boston on April 22-23 in the South End!
