Saturday, June 16, 2018

Woodmont Grill parking lot shut down (Photos)

Woodmont Grill has lost its parking lot. The parking facility directly adjacent to the restaurant was abruptly closed and fenced off Friday. Their parking attendant is also out of a job for the moment, although their longtime attendant apparently retired a few months back.

The restaurant enjoys the highest volume of sales of any in downtown Bethesda. It certainly will be a step down for many diners, who are accustomed to parking in the convenient lot, to have to deal with the public parking garage across the street.

Patrons were already affronted twice in the last year by the partnership building Marriott's relocated Bethesda headquarters next door. First they started charging a parking fee to use the previously-free lot, then they cut the lot in half. Woodmont Grill did not own the lot; it is controlled by the owners of the Marriott site.

13 comments:

Baloney Concrete said...

"The restaurant enjoys the highest volume of sales of any in downtown Bethesda."

Citation, please.

Anonymous said...

@5:14AM: It has to be either there, Black's, or Ruth's Chris, right?

Anonymous said...

He's right. They do more business than anyone in Bethesda.

Baloney Concrete said...

I’m not saying he isn’t right, but I’m curious where this information comes from. Do restaurants report their revenue somewhere?

Anonymous said...

I've seen numbers before. Maybe restaurant trade magazines or business mags. Can't remember.

Anonymous said...

Re: the sales volume line:

As an Industry worker with over 15 years in the business, several qualifiers need to be provided with this statement. To wit:

-Is this annual revenue as "sales", reported income broken out from some Hillstone corporate filing/PR/report, etc.? Needs to be specified.

-Is it "covers" (butts in seats served), rough annual customers "through the door" (inclusive of bar patrons who may not otherwise be counted in that sort of number), etc.?

-How are we defining "downtown Bethesda"? I suspect we would have general agreement here, but just for the good of the order, again needs some rough parameters in the citation.

-Timeframe -- is this latest available/current year? Average of x years? As of y years ago? You get the idea.


Point is, as Baloney Concrete notes, this is a spurious claim absent a citation to prove it, it adds nothing to the story that broader language couldn't accommodate (eg, "one of the most popular restaurants...").

As a Bethesda restaurant employee, I don't have a dog in the fight of who exactly is #1, (we will often toss around hearsay stats like this that we have heard from whoever over drinks just as daily gossip). But when doing purportedly serious journalism, the standard for quantitative accuracy is much higher.

Anonymous said...

Read all about this in our Spring 2019 Restaurant Special Issue, on newsstands February 2019

Posted by my Jitterbug

Anonymous said...

From Dyer's article of December 14, 2017:

"Woodmont Grill, which some industry insiders say does the most business of any restaurant in downtown Bethesda"

LOL

Anna said...

10:18PM - Thanks for the reminder and recommendation!
We love the annual restaurant issue. It's always fun to talk about it with the restaurant owners and managers, and when we tell them that's what brought us in...well, we forever on get the "friends and family" treatment.

Anonymous said...

The comments on the December article reminded me that Dyer hasn't used the phrases "Old Sport" or "Baba Booey" in ages.

Robert Dyer said...

3:22: Hideous reporting? I pioneered hyperlocal news in Montgomery County, which this story is a great example of. I get no credit, thanks to the county cartel controlling all of the handful of media gatekeepers who give mass coverage to every hobby blogger who lasts more than a year, but zero column inches to the disruptor who started it all.

Anonymous said...

"I pioneered hyperlocal news in Montgomery County...[I'm] the disruptor who started it all"

Has anyone else but you actually said that?

Anna said...

Dyer moans:
Thanks to the county cartel controlling all of the handful of media gatekeepers who give mass coverage to every hobby blogger.

I'm sorry, but I don't believe you.
I don't believe there is a "county cartel controlling this alleged "mass coverage" to every hobby blogger but you. I SEE YOU CALLED YOURSELF A HOBBY BLOGGER

Always the victim.