THE BAD DEAL - professor thoms | BAD DEAL - professor thoms

i'm ryan sutton, the new york food critic for bloomberg news.

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professor thoms | BAD DEAL

Some people consider beer, wings and nachos to be “dinner.” Occasionally, I’m one of those people. Professor Thoms, a dive bar that’s ironically named after one of the world’s great cocktailians, is a decent enough place to carry out those junk food dinner plans. It’s also a big hangout for Harvard kids and Red Sox fans. So that’s the setup. And here’s the action: Thrillist has a BAD DEAL that will pretty much guarantee that you overspend here. Observe:

hrillist is offering $99 for 90-minutes of all you can drink beer, endless wings, an order of XL nachos and “four shots of booze.” Four people can participate.

The REAL COST of the deal, after suggested gratuity on the “$198 value” and tax, is about $140.

What Thrillist doesn’t tell you is that Thoms has 25 cent wings on Thursdays. No reservations or advance payment or strict time frame required. So let’s do some HARVARD MATH.

Let’s say you and your three friends want 12 wings each. That’s $12 for 48 wings on Thursday.

So that’s $12 for wings plus two pitchers of Harpoon ale at $14 each, plus a regular order of nachos for $9.95 (trust me, the regular nachos are big enoughhere), and four shots of $6 booze. That’s $73.95, a savings of $25 over the Thrillist Deal.

Added bonus of avoiding the Thrillist deal: if you’re not hungry, you EAT LESS and SPEND LESS. What a concept! Don’t want the booze? That’s $59 bucks altogether instead of $98.

Or come any other day of the week. Get 48 wings for $37.90, skip the booze, get nachos and two pitchers of beer for a total of $76

Mathematics aside, why would any group of four want to lock themselves into a dinner of nothing else than wings, beer, nachos and whiskey?

Related: Why would any Ivy-leaguer be dumb enough to put a $100 down payment on dive bar food and booze?

Incidentally, if any party of four has ever spent more than $140 on food and beer at Professor Thom’s, I’d quite frankly like to know about it. That’s my way of saying this deal doesn’t help you save money, it helps you spend money (that’s one of the eight bad deal rules).

“Your 90 minutes begins promptly at the beginning of the chosen time slot, so please arrive at least 15 minutes early,” says the answering machine at Professor Thoms, which means enough people are likely wasting money on this deal.

Related: You arrive 15 minutes early for Per Se. You arrive 15 minutes late for a dive bar. That’s the rule.