By Jordan Heller and Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Staff
MANHATTAN — MTA construction workers may be despised on Second Avenue, but a steakhouse on E. 50th Street has decided to show the much maligned laborers some love — in the hope the owners will get something in return.
Maloney & Porcelli Steakhouse is offering the MTA work crews digging up the street in front of their location on E. 50th Street, between Park and Madison avenues, an incentive to make their deadlines: free booze and free steak.
Every time the construction workers meets a deadline for installing a ventilation system for the extension of the LIRR to Grand Central, the restaurant will offer up an open bar. If the crew finishes the job by the November target, every worker gets a free steak dinner, along with all they can drink for the night.
"We just knew we had construction coming and we wanted to come up with a way to get the neighborhood involved and to incentivize the workers to work as hard as they could," Allison Good, a spokeswoman for the restaurant, told DNAinfo.
The restaurant has also set up a page on its website that features a live cam of the construction site and a countdown to the next open bar (provided the crews lay down the foundation on time). People can also sign up to join the crew at its open bar night.
"Around 400 people signed up this morning," Good said on Tuesday.
The steakhouse is also running ads at local telephone kiosks, which feature construction workers touting the restaurant.
"Digging in front of Maloney & Porcelli has ignited in me a passion I didn’t know I had," one worker featured in the ad is quoted as saying.
