Everyone knows that eating out costs more than cooking your meals at home, but restaurants
employ all kinds of tricks to milk even more money out of their customers.
From the design of the menu to the choices on the wine list, your visit to a restaurant
has been carefully orchestrated to make you feel good about parting with your hard-earned
cash.
It may even have you coming back next week for a chance to do it again.
Upselling
When you're ordering your meal, restaurants have all kinds of ways to upsell your choices.
If you're ordering a vodka drink, your server may ask if you want it with Grey Goose.
If you choose a steak and baked potato, your server might ask if you want to add a lobster
tail, or make your baked potato fully loaded.
It's about making the experience better for the guests while slowly increasing the bill.
"They said 'Market Price'...
What market are you shopping at?"
Server incentives
Anyone who's worked in the restaurant industry is familiar with server incentives.
Owners and management will incentivize the servers to super-sell a particular item.
The server who sells the most of the item during that shift can win a prize, which may
just be cold hard cash.
That's enough motivation for most servers to try to talk you into a dish that you may
not particularly want.
If a server is a little bit too enthusiastic about the chicken and artichoke special or
a new microbrew, it might be the incentive item of the night.
Smaller portions
You may not have even noticed it, but according to The Guardian, the plates at your favorite
restaurant may be shrinking.
On a smaller plate, it still looks like you have a lot of food, but the resulting smaller
portions will make you more likely to order multiple plates or add on desserts.
Savvy servers will likely even recommend a minimum number of plates to share for your
group.
Cha-ching.
Instant refill
If you've ordered a bottle of wine or premium water for the table, you may notice how excellent
the service seems to be when it comes to constantly making sure you have a full glass.
Yes, this does mean that your server is a seasoned pro, but maybe not quite for the
reason you think.
The server's goal is to have that bottle finished by the time you're barely halfway done with
your entree.
What are you gonna do, finish out the rest of the meal with nothing to sip on?
Of course not.
Nine times out of ten, you'll go for that second bottle, or at least another glass.
The same rule works with cocktails and beers.
Servers notice when your glass is about a quarter full so they can have a fresh drink
in front of you by the time you're polishing off that last sip.
"Surprise!"
Surcharge surprise
Even if you know exactly how much your meal costs, you may still get a shock when the
check arrives.
That's because restaurants often add surcharges that boost the total bill.
In cities that have raised the minimum wages for restaurant workers, proprietors might
tack a minimum wage surcharge onto a customer's total.
But those aren't the only surcharges to watch for.
Restaurants in most states are legally allowed to charge you up to 4 percent extra on your
bill if you're paying with a credit card, as long as they make the policy clear on the
menu or your server tells you.
Sides aren't included
If you're accustomed to dining at upscale steakhouses, you're probably used to this
policy.
Steakhouses rarely accompany their prime cuts of meat with a side dish.
Along with your $50 ribeye, you'll be expected to cough up another $10 for a baked potato.
This practice could easily trickle over to other styles of restaurants, so you may want
to ask specifically what's included with your entree.
Engineered menus
There's an entire industry dedicated to engineering restaurant menus in a way that prompts you
to spend the most bucks on your dining experience.
Some of the most common tricks are the absence of dollar signs in pricing and the use of
ethnic food terms to make items seem more authentic.
"I'll have the Thai chicken pizza."
"Hey look, if I get it without the nuts and leeks and stuff, is it cheaper?"
Restaurant menus may even highlight or bold the font of an item they wish to push.
Super pricey dishes are sometimes decoy items, placed on the menu to make the rest of the
prices seem more reasonable.
Even the eye movements of people reading menus have been analyzed so menu engineers can guide
your eyes to the dishes with the highest profit margins.
Desserts
Even if you don't usually order dessert, you may have been roped in by some of the dessert-selling
tricks that occur in many restaurants.
Some restaurants instruct their staff to leave the dessert menu on the table without asking
customers if they want to see it first.
When the dessert menu is dropped in arm's reach or standing on the side of the table
the entire meal, most people can't help but pick it up to take a peek.
And if you're still hungry from those smaller portions, dessert can be awfully tempting.
"Smells chocolatey, ay?
Now… eat it!"
Wine psychology
We already know that alcohol is the highest markup in a restaurant, so it should be no
surprise that the wine you buy at a restaurant costs you far more than you'd pay for the
same bottle at the grocery store.
In fact, one glass of wine might cost you more than the restaurant paid for the entire
bottle.
What you may not know, however, is that the restaurant understands the psychology of those
ordering the wine.
People will rarely order the cheapest bottle on a wine list for fear of seeming cheap.
So the second cheapest bottle on the menu, the one many customers opt for, is usually
the worst value.
The cheapest bottle is often a better deal, especially in restaurants with carefully curated
lists.
Most of us can't tell the difference anyway.
"Is it red or white?"
"Red."
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