Tickets go on sale the Saturday before
Ticket sales for any given pop-up will occur one week prior. Since pop-ups, when they happen, are on Saturdays at lunch, that means any ticket sales will happen on Saturdays.
The ticket-sale link is announced by email
We send out the link to buy tickets via email exclusively. Why not via Twitter or Facebook? Because those channels reach only a fraction of interested people. As uncool and as 1998 as email is, it has a much higher chance of reaching those who are truly interested.
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We email the link 3 hours before ticket sales go live
We have always tried to send the link well before ticket sales are live so subscribers don’t have to scramble to buy tickets RIGHT AWAY.
There’s a lot of info on the ticketing site having to do with menu options. Though most people have reported that the process is straightforward and easy enough, there’s a moderate amount to digest for newcomers.
This gives anyone who is FANATIC* enough about it time to weigh his/her options and consider his/her Saturday lunch schedule before committing. It also gives you time to make arrangements to…
Pro tip: Try buying your tickets from a desktop/laptop computer
We’ve recently switched our ticketing platform to EventBrite, which has a reliable mobile experience (unlike our previous vendor), but if you feel your connection at home is better/less spotty, you may want to try from a laptop/desktop browser.
This brings me back to the bit about troubleshooting the “link not working” issue. We use Brown Paper Tickets to handle sales. I looked at a number of other options, including, yes, EventBrite. BPT was the only one that allows us to ask buyers which pizza and plus-item they’d like AT THE TIME OF SALE. This has worked well, more or less. However, it appears that BPT has one glaring, stupid flaw: They don’t have a reliable mobile version. Every person who reported the lack of a live purchase link at the designated sale time was on a phone. (Tablet browsers apparently worked, but I would still advise you to use a desktop browser if at all possible.)
Email and sales timing
I do realize there are people who have anticipated the times we send the email and/or open sales. The first two pop-ups, we sent the email at 10am, with sales opening at noon. Some people got used to that and told me that they checked margotspizza.com at noon this last time for an announcement. I’m sorry that we didn’t get our communications out sooner this last time. That said…
We’ll likely be moving the email/sales timing to late afternoon/early evening on Saturdays from now on.
The 10am/noon combo was bad because that’s prime toddler time with the actual Margot, and I am usually at the playground and unavailable to answer email/troubleshoot during ticketing. OR, on the rare occasion that we have back-to-back pop-up weeks, I may even be making pizza at the time. So, late afternoon/early evening it will be. I don’t want to give an exact time, because, as much as I try to button up this process, sometimes life/2-year-olds/technical difficulties get in the way.
Sales/announcements do not occur on margotspizza.com
Oh, I’m also reminded that we DO NOT post the ticket link/widget on margotspizza.com. It goes out via the email. We posted the ticket-buying widget on our official site as a trial for Pop-up No. 2. It was problematic. The website took too long to load, and people did not like this experience. I will tell you to save your time looking for updates here. The only info you will find here are the dates of upcoming pop-ups. We post those as soon as we confirm them with the good folks at EMILY.
Tickets sell out fast
As in less than 2 minutes the last couple of sales. So chances are, if you don’t see a live link to sales and it’s 5 minutes or more past the stated on-sale time, it’s probably because no tickets remain.
There are ~24 slots in each pop-up, so it is question of supply. I wish we had more tickets to sell, but there is a limited window of time for us to do this at lunch in the host restaurant.
All our inventory is on the floor
All the tickets for sale for any given week are all the tickets we have. I don’t have extras that I’m holding back on. There are none “in the back.”
There is no waiting list
I have had people ask before, and in the past I’ve taken down names for a “waiting list,” but from here on out, we’re not going to keep a waiting list. It’s just me managing ticketing and organizing these pop-ups on my nights and weekends off. Tiny violins, I know, but it’s one area I feel I can cut out of the process with minimal harm to the guest experience while allowing me to concentrate on areas that WILL improve overall pop-up performance. Which is a long way of saying…
If we have cancelations, we will announce newfound ticket availability via Twitter: @margotspizza
If you get tickets…
If you do get tickets, do know that I will be following up with you at some point on Sunday to personally confirm your order, check in about any dietary restrictions or preferences, and just make sure things are off to a good start. I OBSESS over this process going smoothly as much as I do over the recipe and preparation of our bar pies.
So, if you have any questions or worries, please note that you’ll have a chance to make them known.
I hope this is helpful. I don’t want this to look like it’s some kind of game. What’s outlined above is how we handle a relatively high demand for the extremely limited supply we have on offer. (More on that here.) If you have suggestions on how we can improve, I’m all ears!
If you have any other questions, try this FAQ — or feel free to email me if they’re not addressed there. I am always happy to hear from you.
Hasta la pizza,
Adam
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* I am under no illusion that anyone is actually planning their day around this.