uWink Hollywood Grand Opening party.... (in no particular order)
(1) No celebs that I noticed.
(2) Lots of booze compared to the prior one. Totally open bar with lots of bartenders serving drinks, giant shots (4 ouncers?), and beers like it was New Years. Cocktail waitresses came around often with big glasses of wine and champagne. Looks like Q2 is going to have a lot of "one-time booze charges" LMAO!!
(3) Crowd was considerably younger than the Woodland Hills party. Woodland Hills I'd say the average age was in their 40s. This one....mostly 20-somethings, mostly in their low 20s. Seemed like the only people over 30 were executives for the company and their spouses, lol. Unfortunately what was absent from this party from my notice was any press or camera or reporters. Maybe they were there and I missed them. There was a really cool uWink ice sculpture apparently donated by a vodka sponsor, but no sponsors were there serving/promoting like last time.
(4) On some of the big screens I kept seeing Pepsi screensavers. That plus the occasional Pepsi on the iBar got me asking around.....apparently Pepsi is a paying sponsor of uWink....at least so I heard from the grapevine there.
(5) Also from the grapevine....there's a lot of buzz about some huge revenue-generating partnerships that will blow the current burger revenue away and make uWink very profitable. Take that with a grain of salt....heard from people who's relationship I wasn't even sure of....but a lot of licensing chatter that will dwarf the restaurant revenue IN ADDITION to the restaurant chain, of course. Expect some huge announcements fairly soon. (let's just say by year's end). Disclaimer -- this was gossip, I have no idea if any of it is true, and I am in no way recommending anybody buy based on this nor will I buy or sell based on this.
(6) Really cool new feature with the games...you can dial in with your cell phone to play the group games so that you can be standing anywhere in the restaurant (say with a drink, at the iBar) and play along. For the trivia game, for example, you watch the big screen TV and answer questions by touching a button on your phone. You then can place or even win. Top prize gets a discount off their check eventually or a free dessert or whatever. The real cool thing about this feature....they plan on having HUGE screens out in the middle of the food court so that passerbys NOT EVEN IN THE RESTAURANT can see the games, dial in, and play with their cell phones. At the end of the game they'll receive a text message encouraging them to come to uWink and offer them a discount or a coupon or whatever. Ontop of all of this, the games will eventually be linked so that you can play through the internet as well in group games somehow.
(7) Mountain View is still so far scheduled to soft open August 11.
(8) The bar terminals swivel I just noticed this trip which makes it far easier rather than having to adjust your bar stools to the screen.
(9) This location consists of two big rooms so half was for the party, and half was for paying customers. At around 10pm when I spied and noticed that there was a waiting list for the other room and it was filled. However, don't be surprised if we have 1/2 a dozen bloggers all reporting that they were there and the place was empty, LOL. ;)
(10) That's all I can think of right now. Any questions? I'd be more than happy to answer.
Raw
