AT almost any big nightclub in New York City, it seems that most people — the rappers, the models and the maybe-21-year-old blondes teetering on spike heels — are striving to show they belong near the top of some theoretical pyramid of incandescence. But trying to divine the club status hierarchy, for those concerned with such things, can seem like a game, if not (after more than a few Ketel Ones) something approaching an art.
Artin Bey Archer believes he has it down to a science. Mr. Archer, 35, works as a bottle host at Home, a club on West 27th Street. His job is to lure in big spenders, massage their egos and coax them to keep spending.
“I have a Rolodex of over 3,000, broken down into different categories — are they five-star, four-star, three-star,” Mr. Archer explained, barking over a throbbing dance beat at the club last Saturday. His criterion for status is simple: the willingness to reserve a table and spend very large amounts of money on drinks by the bottle. Three-star clients are willing to exceed the club’s usual minimum, two bottles of liquor or Champagne at $350 apiece, per table. Five-star clients, many of them men armed with platinum cards, are willing to shatter it.
In return, Mr. Archer rewards them with the best tables next to the prettiest women, and showers them with the most attention. “In the ’90s, you had to know the door guy,” he said. “If you did, you were king for a night.” Now, according to Mr. Archer, as well as club owners and patrons, it is the bottle host who is more likely bestowing status to the needy.
So if you are looking for someone to focus your resentments on for the indignities of bottle service, bottle hosts might be a good place to start. Clubs’ increasing reliance on bottle service for revenue has placed more importance on the role. While the job is evolving — some are little more than floor managers — in some cases, the bottle host has become the face of the establishment.
“It used to be the promoter who was at the forefront,” said Jamie Mulholland, an owner of Cain on West 27th Street. “Over the last three years, it’s very much the bottle hosts who have become the most prominent person in the club.”
To critics of bottle service, these hosts are further trappings of a warped system in which the old intricacies of after-hours chic have been vulgarized down to mere spending power. For club owners, bottle hosts who bring in business help them survive in an increasingly competitive industry in which overhead costs like insurance and rents are climbing, scrutiny by the city and law enforcement is increasing, and some clubs are losing revenue as traditional New York patrons pause in their tracks at the sight of the police barricades blocking off West 27th Street, known informally as club row.
(Club row took another hit two weeks ago with the death of Orlando Valle, a mailroom worker from the Bronx, who plunged down an elevator shaft at BED in a scuffle with the “Oz” actor Granville Adams, after celebrating his 35th birthday with a private bottle of vodka. BED is now temporarily closed, according to the New York Nightlife Association.)
David Rabin, an owner of Lotus and president of the New York Nightlife Association, explained that many customers, particularly wealthy ones, prefer the individualized attention afforded by the best hosts over mass e-mail invitations from a promoter. People appreciate feeling like “they have some sort of service not available to the general public,” Mr. Rabin said.
Since bottle service is the most significant revenue stream for many clubs, it is hardly surprising that bottle hosts usually earn more than any other club employee — $350 to $750 a night, plus 5 percent of the waitress tips. “You’re not going to spend $2,000 a week, plus 5 percent tips, on someone to bring in good-looking people,” said Mike Romer, an owner of Room Service, a restaurant and lounge on East 21st Street. “You’re paying them to bring in spenders.”
Top clients at clubs typically understand that, at the more exclusive clubs, walk-ups (people who dare approach a night on the town with spontaneity) are rarely admitted unless they are young, attractive and female. The only other way in is usually to know an owner, or more often, to have the bottle host’s cellphone number.
Between favored clients and hosts, the relationship is a status tango that pays dividends for each. Last Saturday at the safari-themed Cain, Tolga Kantarci, who works in finance in Manhattan, was standing in the V.I.P. area. Mr. Kantarci, 30, recounted showing up at Cain recently to celebrate a friend’s birthday and finding Randy Scott, a bottle host he has followed from club to club, waiting with balloons and a cake.
Many clubs “pretty much play the same music and attract the same people,” Mr. Kantarci said. “It’s the host that makes it special.”
Mr. Scott, a tall man with chiseled features in a custom-made black pinstriped suit, glided through the club’s V.I.P. area that night with the commanding air of Sirio Maccioni presiding over the dining room at Le Cirque. He paused to chat up old clients with the practiced calm of a cardiologist, and placed his hand on the shoulder of new ones as if it were a benediction.
Mingling among hipsters with sideburns shaped like railroad spikes, members of the ruling family of a West African nation, and many, many models unwinding after Fashion Week, Mr. Scott acted as much like a star as a servant.
Hand-delivering a bottle of Champagne to a table of models, Mr. Scott, 38, popped the cork, filled everyone’s flute — then filled his own, settling in for a chat. Smiling with leading-man confidence, he stroked the cheek of a young model from Portugal. A few minutes later, he summarized his customer service philosophy. “It’s all smoke and mirrors,” he said, smiling broadly.
The power of the more prominent bottle hosts means that some owners find it important to sign them on before starting a new club, much as the owner of a Major League Baseball expansion franchise might splurge on an All-Star slugger. When opening Cain in 2004, Mr. Mulholland plucked Mr. Scott from Marquee and Jayma Cardoso from Pangaea.
A new bottle host can pump up business at an established club, too. George Iordanou, who owns Nikki Midtown, a restaurant and nightclub on East 50th Street, said he recently imported Jon Staffas, the bottle host from a sister club, Nikki Beach, in Sardinia. In four weeks, Mr. Iordanou said, traffic from European expatriates has increased, as have bottle sales, some 15 percent.
At Tenjune, a nightclub with zebra-print tables on Little West 12th Street that derives as much as 70 percent of its revenue from bottle service, the primary bottle host is Aalexander Julian. Like a doorman, Mr. Julian will greet clients and let them inside. But his role does not end at the velvet rope. “It’s grabbing them by the hand and taking them all the way through,” Mr. Julian, 32, explained. “It’s making sure the bathroom attendants know who they are.”
For out-of-town clients, he often books hotel rooms or restaurant tables. He is, in essence, an insider contact, a valet, a concierge.
His efforts appear to be paying off. Mark Birnbaum, an owner of Tenjune, said the club’s 28 tables are usually booked for Thursday, Friday and Saturday by 4 p.m. that day, despite the fact that the average bill for a table is around $3,500, and almost nightly at least one will climb as high as $8,000 or even $12,000. A bottle of Cristal Rosé Champagne alone costs $1,600 there.
Which works quite nicely, if not for the customer, at least for the club — and the host.
As Mr. Julian put it, sounding satisfied, “You’re only making the money if you’re attracting the money.”
