Hip Flask, the rooftop bar in the Marriott Bethesda Downtown hotel at 7707 Woodmont Avenue, is now offering private rooftop igloos by reservation only. The heated outdoor igloos seat up to 8 people, and come with blankets if you need them. They can be reserved for 1.5 hours at a time Tuesday through Thursday for a $300 minimum food and beverage purchase. On Fridays and Saturdays, a private igloo will go for a $500 minimum for 2 hours. You can reserve an igloo online.
Photo courtesy Marriott International
13 comments:
Seriously? That's mighty steep for a moribund nightlife scene. I'll have whatever they were drinking when they came up with this pricing.
1.5 hours for a $300 minimum and 2.0 hours for a $500 minimum. That's insanity. You're going to have people pounding drinks to make the minimum.
And if you need more time.... they have you book another block, and you have to meet the minimum for that time block as well.
I mean, if you actually have 6-8 people, I don't see the minimum as much of a barrier. Assuming everyone orders two drinks and you get a couple of light appetizers you'll be over that easily.
Other places with these igloos charge you a similar fee on top of your food and beverage. It's Bethesda, so it's a harder market for this, but I could see some work happy hours easily booking these up.
This place has been amazingly popular. I tried to go there a few weeks ago on a Saturday night, and the wait was over 1.5 hours. We had a drink at the bar in the lobby then left before going up. It's so busy they have you scan a QR code at the lobby and you get put into a virtual waiting queue.
What they're doing right, and I'm surprised few tried it before, is offer a high-end cocktail bar targeted at the older crowd. This works well in Bethesda given the demographics. Where else can people go for mixologist-style cocktails? Your typical Bethesda 50 year old isn't going to seek out the sticky floors and plastic solo cups of Caddie's or Tommy Joes.
The place with potential is La Catrina. They have pretty good cocktails and the first floor bar is a nice place to hang out. The risk they run is getting desperate for customers to fill both floors (upstairs is a club/dance floor) and turning to the wrong crowd. That's what did it for the previous tenant (4935 Bar) -- the promoters they hired brought in a non-Bethesda rough crowd.
1:31 bending over sooooo far backwards to avoid saying "black"
3:21…white crowds can never be rough? Only black crowds can be rough? I guess in your mind, the Jan 6 crowd were kittens!
@3:21 PM: Why are you making assumptions like that?
@1:31 PM: If this place is truly doing this well, I'm stunned and there should be more places like it. You'd never guess there was an actual nightlife scene here based on the desolate and moribund sidewalks of Bethesda Row after 10 PM on a Saturday night.
Bethesda Row is for shopping and dining. It's not designed to be a 3am hotspot. That doesn't make it "moribund."
By "non-Bethesda" the person obviously meant white. /s
6:50, despite Robert's frequent deployment of the word to describe Bethesda's nightlife and general business/commercial environment, there is just no way that a sidewalk can be "moribund."
Unless maybe, like the sidewalk in front of 8011 Woodmont Avenue, which Robert also helpfully just reported on, it's literally being destroyed or removed.
Sure do miss Saphire....
@9:15 AM: Who said anything about 3am? I said after 10PM.
@2:32 PM: Sidewalks can absolutely be moribund. Nobody's out walking on Bethesda Row's sidewalks after 10PM. Maybe you explain why that is.
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