It’s a lovely place. Especially if you live there.
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Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.
If you’re a regular at your local bar or restaurant, you might occasionally get a free drink or two.
If they like you, that is.
Repeat business is, after all, the very core of a restaurant’s survival.
One city’s restaurants and cafés, however, are taking the idea of favoring the locals a little further.
They’re openly charging them 10 percent less than they are out-of-towners.
The city of Bruges is one of Belgium’s most beautiful. Some of its gorgeous buildings date from the 13th and 14th centuries. Some were featured in the movie “In Bruges,” which makes the city seem an excessively exciting place, one that can even accommodate Colin Farrell.
I went there last December and my girlfriend and I must have spent three days in the sublime Dumon chocolate emporium.
We did, however, find time to have lunch with Belgian friends and they picked up the check. I didn’t look at it, but I fancy my friend Marianne manages a nifty Bruges accent.
Accent, you see, is one of the key components for the discount.
Gauthier Gevaert, who runs a French fries café — chip shop in British — told the De Standaard newspaper: “I’m not going to ask anyone for his passport. I can hear it if someone is from here. If you speak the dialect, it’s good for me.”
You’ll be muttering that this can’t be legal. But it is. The restaurants and cafés are public about it.
“As long as the customer knows in advance what the rules are, and as long as it’s not discrimination based on, for example, race or faith,” says the Belgian consumer protection agency, FPS.
Indeed, as one restaurant owner — Philippe Thijs of Chez Vincent — told De Standaard: “It’s just another button on the cash register.”
I imagine the buttons are marked “One of Us” and “Get Off My Lawn.”
I can hear you’re still muttering. I can sense a feeling of hurt. Surely the Mayor of Bruges isn’t OK with this. Surely he has an image to keep up on behalf of his city.
“There are 6 million tourists here a year. That makes Bruges an expensive city. These small gestures are nice,” Mayor Renaat Landuyt told De Standaard.
Surely we’d all agree that there’s just not enough nice in the world. Clearly in Bruges, they embrace it. If you live there, that is.
The city of Bruges has around 118,000 inhabitants. The metropolitan area may enjoy as many as 270,000. That would be a lot of discounts if they all have their accents down.
I was unaware, however, of any social unrest while I was there.
The home-town practice only came to light because some rude non-Brugesist still wanted the discount, didn’t get it and complained to the authorities.
I suspect he got a Bruges awakening.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.