One of the biggest casualties of the financial crisis has to be the expense account meal. With the financial industry in turmoil, and unemployment higher than it’s been in decades, it’s easy to understand why those who still have their jobs are hesitant to appear brazen with the corporate card. Upscale steakhouse Maloney & Porcelli sits at 50th and Park, in the heart of expense account country, footsteps away from the likes of Citigroup, Blackrock and Morgan Stanley, and is working hard to help. Their clientele has always considered them a top spot to enjoy a 24 inch steak but with CFOs keeping tabs on every cent, it takes guts to turn in a receipt from a huge meal.
Enter the Maloney & Porcelli expense report generator (expenseasteak.com), a website that makes it easy to turn a decadent meal into a responsible expense. Simply enter the cost of a meal, and the generator will create a printable sheet of expense report-friendly receipts (office supplies, business how-to books and taxis) exactly totaling the amount of the meal. See it here.
And that’s not all we’re doing to help. Maloney & Porcelli is also famous for basketball sized pork shanks that are nearly impossible to finish. This poses its own unique set of problems since coming back to the office with a doggie bag emblazoned with a Maloney & Porcelli logo might raise a few eyebrows. Taking a cue from luxury boutiques who began offering their customers plain white shopping bags earlier this year, M&P’s doggie bags are utilizing a unique form of camouflage - the logos of other, less pricey restaurants. That way, as a small paragraph on the back of the bags reads, a customer will be “free to roam wherever you please, completely invisible to the watchful eyes of the etiquette police.”
Outside the restaurant, if you happen to be passing by - we’ve provided a long list of messages that will help people remember that there’s nothing like a good steak, even if times are tough.
AND, if you want to steal your competitors’ business in your own private room, you can do that over a steak as well. Wall Street Journal and NY Times readers had one of these fall out of their papers on select days this September:
