[HN Gopher] Restaurant Menu Tricks (2020)
___________________________________________________________________
Restaurant Menu Tricks (2020)
Author : holotrope
Score : 82 points
Date : 2024-11-28 20:17 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| allears wrote:
| "Allen says artificial intelligence and machine learning could
| transform this even further - algorithms could look at your
| previous choices when you last visited a restaurant and suggest
| other items you might like.
|
| "The restaurant industry has probably spent tens of billions of
| dollars over the years trying to understand menu design, menu
| engineering and psychology," he says. "But the opportunities
| presented by the fourth industrial revolution are huge. Imagine
| being able to order a meal that has been designed to include your
| favourite foods with a single click."
|
| Well, no, as the article suggests, AI will instead be used to
| direct diners to the most profitable menu item.
| crooked-v wrote:
| If it's anything like the recommendation engines Amazon et al
| currently use, you'll order General Tso's chicken once and then
| for the next year every recommendation will be slight
| variations of General Tso's chicken from restaurants with weird
| names you've never heard of.
| caseyohara wrote:
| _[Recommended for you]_ General Tso's Chicken - Legendary
| Sweet & Spicy Juicy Tender Pre-Cooked Masterpiece, 24 oz
| Frozen Feast for Dinner Warriors - 5-Minute Meal Magic,
| Famous Chinese Food Delight
|
| Brand: XFREUTIXUN
| luckman212 wrote:
| you forgot "2024 New Version"
| knightofmars wrote:
| we're currently in a nostalgia cycle, "2024 Classic
| Recipe"
| antsar wrote:
| Color: 6-pack
| odysseus wrote:
| [Overall Pick] Orange Chicken - Famous Crispy Sweet Sour
| Flavor - 2024 New Improve Version - Special Gourmet Frozen
| Fast Cook Meal for Happy Eating Time
|
| Brand: ORANCHIC
|
| Low returns: Most people don't return this
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| AI will be used to benefit us in the same way that social media
| is used to benefit us.
| whatshisface wrote:
| If that was practicable from a logistics standpoint, you would
| already be able to ask the server for anything you wanted at
| any restaurant today.
| GuestFAUniverse wrote:
| What if most of that is utter nonsense some psychologist, like
| their former failed high priests like Zimbardo, Ariel & Co-Quaks,
| tell them, because real work is hard?
| portaouflop wrote:
| They apparently have the numbers to back up that they actually
| make an impact though? As long as those aren't made up, but I
| didn't check of course
| whatshisface wrote:
| Like any executive services sector, while they have the
| statistics to prove that the rules aren't made up, the
| numbers are. :-)
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| I was a fine dining chef for 17 years. If you were in San
| Francisco during the 90s, I might have cooked for you. A simple
| way to increase demand is to remove or change the least popular
| menu item every week or every month. This technique has been so
| successful for me I wouldn't waste much time doing anything else.
| Once I made a Napoleon pastry for a desert special while at La
| Folie on Polk st. which sadly closed recently. I had extra pastry
| cream and made Paris-Brest because we never threw out food. One
| waitress sold Napoleon on every table and the other waitress sold
| nothing but Paris-Brest. The dishes were fundamentally the same
| so I made both anytime I did one or the other as a special
| because waitstaff for reasons not explained in the article will
| sell nothing but one and others the other. I made cheese dishes
| to sell before the desert and fruit soups in the summer. This is
| the mid 90s and we were tracking data. The chef pulled me aside
| and showed me the sales from the previous month because I sold
| 1.2 deserts per customer.
|
| Nonetheless, for the last six years I cooked I was a private chef
| on a mega yacht. People ask me if the guests told me what they
| want to eat. I say never because I never asked what people want
| to eat. I cooked what I want to eat and then make enough for the
| guests and crew. It is the best menu strategy. In fine dining,
| the customers make decisions all day long and in the case of
| being a private yacht chef, the guests are making million and
| billion dollar decisions. The last thing they want to do is have
| to decide what to eat for dinner. The family I cooked for rarely
| ate off the boat. And when they did it was because I said
| something like, "I hear there is a very good restaurant in St.
| Barts named ....," which was code for "I want the night off."
|
| I believe the reason one waitress would sell every last Paris-
| Brest and the other would sell every last Napoleon was because
| they told the guests in the restaurant what they wanted to eat
| for desert. They made the decision for the guests.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Reminds me of a diner where I grew up. Not fine dining but no
| real menu. The waitress brought you something and assured you
| "you'll like it." People went there when they were hungry and
| didn't want to make any decisions. Maybe it reminded them of
| their mom's kitchen at home. You get what she cooked.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| When I worked as a welder in a shipyard, very often I would
| get a pre-chosen lunch set from one of the multitude of taco
| trucks that showed up. It ranged from regular, professional
| trucks where you could order from a menu, on down to the
| wives of the workers selling tamales or the like out of the
| trunk of their cars to make a little extra on the side.
|
| Nine times out of ten I'd usually just get the meal of the
| day from one of the ladies. It was _always_ good, and it was
| actually kind of fun to wonder what you were going to get! I
| definitely see the appeal of not having to think about it.
| MrMember wrote:
| We had a place sort of like this in my hometown. They were
| only open for lunch on weekdays and you could show up and get
| a takeout box of whatever they chose to cook that day for a
| fixed price.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| That reminds me one aspect of approximately every vaguely-
| popular diner I've ever been to:
|
| The Special.
|
| Just show up, sit down, turn the coffee-cup right-side up,
| and order exactly like this before anyone has a chance to put
| a menu in front of you: "I'll have the special."
|
| If they're doing it right, there will be no questions about
| your order.
|
| Coffee will show up. Soon after, food will show up.
|
| It will be fast, hot, inexpensive, and of a general quality
| that is par or better compared to anything else they might be
| have on the menu at that particular diner.
| AstroJetson wrote:
| I worked in the Buffalo area, and went with friends once or
| twice a week to lunch. It was the same place. First few times
| I went, I got a menu, the two of them did not. I thought it
| was strange, but figured that since they went a lot they had
| the menu memorized. About the 12th time there, I didn't get a
| menu. I thought it was weird, but then I kind knew the menu.
| Then lunch came and I hadn't ordered it, but we were talking,
| so I ate it and it was fine.
|
| But the second time I was WTF?!? I asked and got told by the
| server that they had remembered what I ate and went from
| there. The process was: if I wanted to order, when we sat,
| ask for a menu. They sometimes had specials that were
| different (not just a marked down chicken dish) then we got
| menus to see them. Otherwise lunch appeared. It was really
| kind of nice that they knew what we liked and brought it. We
| seldom had the same plates which was also interesting.
|
| And here it is almost 35 years later and I still remember
| lunch there. Miss you Jenny and Dave.
| downut wrote:
| On the SE side of El Camino/Lawrence Expy in the mid '90s in
| suburban strip mall hell was an Indian restaurant run by a
| superlative cook who would get very grumpy if you tried to
| direct her away from her fixed price "meal". So we would
| gather up 6 or so eaters and just have her serve us. It was
| always a surprise and insanely good. Couldn't tell you what
| it cost. Anyway, we were there to eat her food, and she let
| you know it.
|
| We always brought our toddler and at the beginning the lady
| says assertively something like "I'll take her" and hauls our
| _daughter_ around the corner. So after about 20 minutes of no
| sign of daughter I decide to go take a peek at the situation.
| Well it turns out she has a daughter of her own, Down 's
| Syndrome, it appears to be, and our daughter and the cook's
| daughter were having a fine time hanging out at the end of
| the corridor around the corner. I went back to the table and
| finished our excellent meal.
|
| We are _always_ interested in these sorts of things and now
| we find them more commonly off the beaten track in Mexico.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| >I believe the reason one waitress would sell every last Paris-
| Brest and the other would sell every last Napoleon was because
| they told the guests in the restaurant what they wanted to eat
| for desert. They made the decision for the guests.
|
| This wouldn't surprise me at all, honestly. I've rarely gone to
| fancy restaraunts, but when I have, I generally explain to the
| wait staff what kind of thing I prefer, and then ask them for
| their advice and just trust it 100%. The way I see it, if they
| are competent enough to work at a high-end restaraunt, they
| know what to bring out to get a nice tip.
|
| Side-note: I'm currently watching through the HBO Show
| "Succession". If you've seen it, (without revealing any
| personal details) any insight on whether or not the ultra-rich
| are in anyway similar to how they are portrayed on shows like
| that? I tend to think that there are probably a mix of good and
| bad out there, just like any other economic "class" of people,
| I've just never interacted with people who own literal mega-
| yachts before, so it's all assumption on my part. I'll also
| understand if you choose not to say. I'm just trying to get a
| general feel of what people in that economic group are like in-
| person. Are they difficult to deal with? Backstab-y? Petty and
| childish? Genuinely nice and pleasant to be around? Or just
| kind of chill, but very business minded and self-motivated?
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Not OP, nor have I seen Succession. But I do work with many
| very wealthy folks. It's a completely different world in some
| ways, and utterly banal in most others. If I were to
| summarize, it'd be that the Hedonic Treadmill effect is real,
| and you get used to whatever level of anything is around very
| quickly. Adjust for that, and the problems people have are as
| relatable as any other person.
| ggm wrote:
| As an ex chef can you explain the insane over-salting to me? is
| this by design to try and encourage more drinking, or because
| the chef's tastebuds are shot, or because of some pseudo-belief
| in what it does under the salamander or .. what?
|
| On duck fat roasted potato with rosemary? drown it in salt.
| Salt crusted fish? it said it on the menu. Everything else,
| you'd slap them if they turned the salt grinder this many
| rotates at the table.
| Moru wrote:
| A lot of people are used to the extra salt in cheap food. If
| restaurant food isn't salty enough, they will complain. Chefs
| are just adjusting to what their most vocal customers
| complain about.
|
| My co-workers are from the whole spectrum. We can sit at a
| dinner with identical dishes. Me and one more has troubles
| eating because it's so insanely salty. A couple think it's a
| bit over salted but very good. One is adding more salt. How
| are you to please everyone?
|
| I prefer to add salt myself.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Chefs are just adjusting to what their most vocal
| customers complain about.
|
| I'd rather the chef use the least amount required for
| proper cooking and leave it to me if I want more (some
| things absolutely need salt to cook properly, and in
| general it's better to have some). It's easier to add more
| than remove any excess.
|
| > I prefer to add salt myself
|
| Exactly. On the other hand I might not be enough of an
| arsehole because I would never complain about something I
| could fix so trivially myself.
| Moru wrote:
| There are things that needs to be salted while cooking
| but bare minimum yes.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| proper cooking is not really objective though, and the
| moment you have anything involving brining, marinading
| etc. the salt level is kind of out of your hands.
|
| the two strategies to adjust this i've seen, are either
|
| * a sauce boat for sauced dishes, since the sauce is the
| thing that contains more or less sodium and is
| controllable
|
| * more so in Asian restaurants, but you can order sides
| of unseasoned carbs (e.g. rice) to balance it out
| bobthepanda wrote:
| the Dorito effect:
| https://www.vox.com/2015/7/30/9070255/dorito-effect
| retSava wrote:
| It's easier to add salt, than to remove it, so I'm always
| in favor of this strategy. Less salt is one of those things
| that are good for you and only takes some getting used to.
| I can't eat any fast food burgers nowadays, they are just
| too salty.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I've encountered this problem a number of times. It's one of
| a short list of things that will ensure I won't eat there
| again. I can fix something being under-salted, I can't fix
| something being over-salted.
| Loughla wrote:
| 100%
|
| Whenever I eat somewhere new I ask what the staff would have if
| they were me. It's almost always a very good decision. They
| tend to enjoy making recommendations, and I often try something
| I wouldn't have picked myself.
|
| Unless it's a Thai restaurant staffed by native Thai or Korean
| staffed by Koreans. I can't keep up with that spice.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| It's a good litmus test for a restaurant too, because I've
| found it tends to have an uncanny valley.
|
| At less formal restaurants, the staff are chill enough to
| immediately tell you what they eat.
|
| At high end restaurants, they can tell you because they've
| had tastings and ingredient drills.
|
| In the middle? You run into the weird "just enough training
| to pretend to be formal, but not enough to actually have
| comprehensive menu knowledge." Hence a lot of refusal to make
| recommendations or braindead "Do you like steak? The steak's
| good." (And yes, I know all the ways that customers are
| assholes about recommendations)
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| I think it depends where one is. I grew up in the Bay Area and
| our vegetarian family's go-to place for special events was
| Greens at Ft. Mason. Prix-fixe and enjoy. Tried to find an
| equivalent in the Los Angeles area and was told by food/wine
| pros to go into higher-end omnivore places and ask the chef to
| make something appropriate. I was told that chefs here liked
| such challenges.
|
| Failed utterly. Paid high prices for meh pastas and the
| "grilled vegetable plate." Learned my painful lesson and told
| the food/wine pros I knew that they were full of it. Didn't
| hurt that one of them came with me one evening to a place he
| recommended and saw what came out of the kitchen!
| onion2k wrote:
| The single greatest restaurant trick is to give the table one
| wine list, so they're much more inclined to share several bottles
| instead of each drinking what they want.
| weitendorf wrote:
| One thing I've never understood about menu design is the use of
| "market price" for certain items like crab and lobster.
|
| I understand that the prices of these items fluctuate due to
| various factors, but it discourages me from ordering them because
| I don't want to 1. ask the price (when you're with people you
| don't know well it brings attention to you possibly spending more
| than they would on the meal, and can make you come across as a
| bit overly focused on price/money - could be interpreted as rude
| or poor manners) 2. potentially say no based on the price and
| deal with related social vibes that might put off + come up with
| a backup on the menu 3. not ask for the price at all and be
| handed a surprisingly large bill. Some of the times I have asked,
| the waiter will have to physically leave to go check the price,
| which is also something I want to avoid.
|
| You might say something like "if you have to ask, you can't
| afford it" but I genuinely don't mind, and can easily afford,
| paying $50-70 on good seafood when I'm in the mood for it. Crab
| and lobster are some of my favorite foods, and their market price
| often comes in around there. So in the course of my life
| restaurants have probably lost out on hundreds or maybe a couple
| thousand in sales because of "market price". I'm not sure if this
| simply something most restarateurs are unaware of, it not being
| worth it to reprint menus or even put the market price on a
| blackboard somewhere, or some other psychological phenomenon I'm
| unaware of - maybe putting a larger price on the menu discourages
| most other people from ordering it or, makes other diners think
| the restaurant is "too expensive" even if not ordering it, or
| pisses diners off when they pay $X one week and come back and see
| it's at $X+20. Is there a canonical reason?
| mmsc wrote:
| If a waiter has to leave to find out the price of the lobster,
| you're eating lobster in the wrong place.
| Loughla wrote:
| I went on a work trip one time with co-workers. I'm not
| generally someone who is embarrassed by social gaffs
| (gaffes?). But when a fellow college employee looked at the
| waiter in a SUPER high end seafood restaurant in Maine and
| said, "oh no, I don't like lobster. I had that once in silver
| dollar City and it was really rubbery." I wanted to crawl
| under the table.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| This feels like one of those times where a really good
| restaurant host would smile graciously, nod some tacit
| agreement, check for allergies, and then bring out a little
| lobster amuse-bouche on the house just to blow the diners'
| minds.
| weitendorf wrote:
| Somewhat agree. Lobster/Crab are supposed to be kept alive
| until immediately before cooking them (in some cases lobster
| tails are kept frozen but those aren't as often MP, crab can
| be canned but again that's usually not sold at MP), and in
| both cases they're pretty simple to cook at least decently,
| so I don't worry much about food safety or them coming out
| awful. Regardless, even restaurants that sell a lot of
| lobster tend to use MP so the point stands.
| mmsc wrote:
| The point is, a waiter at an establishment that will have
| good lobster will know the price of the lobster for the
| night, starting from the moment the restaurant opens.
| m463 wrote:
| nowadays everything is "market". Saw a hamburger for $24
| pryelluw wrote:
| You didn't see a hamburger for $24, you saw:
|
| An Americana classic styled sandwich made with grill style
| beef patty, melt grade American cheese, two pillow soft buns
| with organic sesame seeds, and a dash of our back of the
| house made ketchup.
|
| There's a difference. :-)
| tptacek wrote:
| In a modern fine dining place, you'd more likely see
| something like:
|
| _Hamburger (smash patty, charred onion, mornay, frites)
| $27_
|
| That's the idiom these days: a name, and in parens a short
| list of attributes.
| xarope wrote:
| you forgot truffle... or fois gras...
|
| nowadays everybody wants to upsell truffle or fois gras
| to add a few more $$ to that burger. Sigh.
| tptacek wrote:
| If you want to eat an $8 cheeseburger, you will have no
| trouble finding one. If you don't want to try a
| restaurant's attempt to "elevate" a burger --- and I
| don't blame you --- don't order it. It's not all a scam.
| The $25 burger is its own genre, and there is a market
| for it.
|
| We had a story a year or so back about the best
| cheeseburger in the country (according to one respected
| reviewer, whose reviews generated lines around the block
| for places). It was in the $8 genre, and people were
| upset!
| mikrl wrote:
| You need to leave off the currency sign too for that
| bougie dimensionless sovl
| m463 wrote:
| Sometimes I see prices like: 22.5
|
| wonder what happens if you try to pay with 22.05?
| jfengel wrote:
| Too many adjectives. Fine dining restaurants usually avoid
| loading down the description like that.
|
| The only adjective likely to make it onto the menu at a
| white-tablecloth restaurant is "house made", and even that
| would be on thin ice. The chef would prefer that you just
| know that of course he's making his own ketchup.
|
| There's a great chapter on this in Dan Jurafsky's book:
|
| https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/thelanguageoffood.html
|
| (The book is almost ten years old, but the trends have only
| exaggerated since then.)
| tptacek wrote:
| It dissuades you, but it attracts other diners, who
| (reasonably) read it as "this is a premium offering,
| uncompromised by margin constraints". It's an "if you have to
| ask" situation. Just don't order the M.P. items!
|
| (Troy: "It said market price. What market do you shop at!?")
| weitendorf wrote:
| I'm not entirely convinced by that explanation alone because
| plenty of other ultra-premium menu items (like fancy steak or
| vintage wines) tend to have their prices listed when seafood
| aren't, and oftentimes I find the market price is not wholly
| unreasonable. I suspect at least some of the reasoning has to
| be in managing consumers' expectations for stable
| prices/availability, and also for size, since serving a
| quarter will cost the restaurant much more than an entire
| deuce.
|
| Also, how come you responded to my comment about lobsters and
| not my email about containers?? (kidding mostly... but do let
| me know if you want to chat containers)
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm not saying M.P. is used primarily as a Veblen device to
| attract customers, only that it has that effect. Lobsters
| are M.P. in part because they're seasonal; they really do
| have variable prices. The kinds of restaurants that have
| M.P. menu items are generally working within pretty strict
| food cost percentage parameters.
| NaOH wrote:
| I agree with all your points, and as someone still in the
| food industry I'd add that the use of Market Price on
| menus often comes down to something mundane: The Market
| Price items fluctuate too much between frequent purchases
| made by the restaurant and those establishments usually
| don't want the not-cheap expense of new copies of the
| menu printed that often.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| >those establishments usually don't want the not-cheap
| expense of new copies of the menu printed that often.
|
| It's nearly 2025 and qr codes are a thing. "Scan this
| code for the current MP (market price)/ TOD (time of day
| price)/ HTBF (how the boss feels price)/ WBTYAP (we've
| been tracking your amazon purchases)/ WR (wrong race
| [...etc] price." As it'll all be on your phone, it'll be
| up to you to hide, or show, your emotions as the $EURPSPS
| (sell) price comes up.
| NaOH wrote:
| I can only speak about my native United States. Indeed,
| QR codes are a thing, yet the high-end restaurants that
| are apt to list a menu item as Market Price are also
| places where there's an emphasis on service (along with
| the food/drink offerings and the atmosphere of the
| establishment). As of now, asking customers in such
| places to do that isn't considered appropriate.
| Certainly, that may change, as standards always shift
| over time.
| mhb wrote:
| Fine. So when the high-end server arrives to announce the
| high-end specials, he can tell you the market prices
| without prompting. Never have seen that, though.
| criddell wrote:
| A nice restaurant is not going to use a QR code for
| anything. They are ugly and the last thing they want is
| for people sharing the dining room space to be looking at
| their phones.
| anotherpaul wrote:
| This article is interesting, but the author seems more excited
| about tricking people into spending more money. You could easily
| use endpoints that are more in the direction of satisfaction and
| happiness than always using money as the goalpost.
|
| I understand that the people he interviewed are likely in the
| business of profit making but as a journalist for the BBC I would
| have hoped for a more honest take.
|
| "Put the most expensive item first so that the others seem more
| reasonable"
|
| That's just messed up and not something to be celebrated IMHO
| liampulles wrote:
| Menu engineering might be one of the better bastardizations of a
| job title I've seen in recent times
| euroderf wrote:
| Nowadays when I ask the waiter/ess "What's good today?" I get the
| stock scripted answer "It's all good".
|
| Are they afraid I'm a snoop from corporate ?
| j_bum wrote:
| My preferred approach is to narrow down to a list of 2-3 items,
| and ask the waiter/ess which they prefer.
|
| Even if they won't explicitly say which they prefer, you can
| almost always tell which is best from facial reactions.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| My wife's preferred approach is to ask the server "if [item
| X] and [item Y] got in a fight, which one would win?"
|
| Usually gets a laugh and a good answer.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| Even at applebees that was sort of my response. I genuinely
| liked 90% of the menu. But I would also lead you along in a
| conversation to figure out what you would enjoy the most.
| pilgrim0 wrote:
| Nothing beats only listing things the restaurant is great at
| making and always have fresh ingredients for. All else is
| subjective.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-12-02 23:01 UTC)