You might think a sticker to Lucy Vincent Beach puts you in exclusive company. You might congratulate yourself for waiting eighteen years to get a mooring in Chilmark. You could even be excused for gloating about your luck in getting a last-minute reservation at the Red Cat Kitchen.

But wait. The Thirsty Test Kitchen has discovered a club so prestigious that we hesitate to let you in on the secret, for fear of making it even harder to get in ourselves. 

The Barn, Bowl & Bistro in Oak Bluffs has established a novel loyalty rewards program called the Barn Mug Club. “We only bought a hundred mugs, so it is kind of exclusive,” said manager Mike Sawyer.

All you have to do is sign up. Except, at the moment, you can’t sign up for anything but a waiting list. First-year memberships sold out in about a month, and when they expire, members will get a chance to re-enlist for half the original $80 fee. If there is any attrition, waitlisters will be added in the order they signed up. The Thirsty Test Kitchen is not betting on a lot of attrition.

What you get is a handsome twenty-ounce beer mug. What you don’t get is free beer. That, of course, would violate the strict alcohol laws of our great commonwealth. Sawyer said members of the mug club have few complaints about paying the regular price for beer.

“The idea was to give our locals a piece of the place, by way of giving them their own personal mug,” he said. “What you also get is all kinds of food perks. One day it’s a free order of dumplings, Wednesday is half off spare ribs, [one day is] half off burgers. Another day it’s half off pizza. It becomes a fun, novel thing. You get a little better bang for your buck.”

The Barn also throws in a few special events for mug club members.

All one hundred mugs are hanging neatly in rows above the U-shaped blue bar. Imagine the boost to your ego when the bartender pulls down your personal beer mug and the rest of the patrons have to drink out of perfectly ordinary pint glasses. Be careful on that front,
however.

Once a friend of mine brought his wife to a favorite after-work dive bar. The bartender, being pretty sharp, slid a full glass of his favorite brew across the bar just as my friend and his wife took their seats. Let’s just say the wife apparently was not aware that my friend was quite that much of a regular at the bar.

So, when and if you make it into the mug club, you won’t have to wait in line for that beach sticker, you won’t need a boat for that mooring in Chilmark, and you won’t have to worry about those Red Cat calories.

Your mug will be there when you walk in.

You just need to be ready to explain to your unsuspecting friends why everyone in the joint calls you a “mugger.”