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@morganlh85: +1 for that site.
Isn't this concept very similar to to using tokens, chips, cards, etc. for video games and gambling. The entire point is to disassociate [is that a word] what you're doing with spending money.
@morganlh85: +1 for that site.
Isn't this concept very similar to to using tokens, chips, cards, etc. for video games and gambling. The entire point is to disassociate [is that a word] what you're doing with spending money.
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Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit, $39
Duo of Beef, $42
It's nice to that high end restaurants have naming conventions no better than Outback.
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@Preyfar:
Yeah... but the quality of food is so much better at Farmhouse (the restaurant whose menu is shown above). Outback purchases products based on cost and they try to keep costs low. Farmhouse uses sustainable products and only the highest quality meats and produce.
NM, just caught the last sentence of the article.
Hilarious site though.
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And when prices are spelled out in arabic characters, people spent even MORE!
twenty dollars = العشرين دولار
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@SkokieGuy: Conversely, when I was in Morocco, I was offered a menu in English. I can speak French, but they insisted. The results were..well, hilarious. I wondered if I could order \"Shrumps\" with \"??????\" on the side.
@HogwartsAlum: Crevette is french for \"shrimp\". I imagine they thought that's how it was translated into English. For someone unaware of that fact, however, the confusion must be enormous.
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Pretty brave there, using the term \"Arabic numerals\". 'Round here, we call 'em \"Merikan numbers\".
@MosesKabob: + I forgot about that. When we like something too much to boycott it, we rename it. That's shows em.
@squinko: I see what you did there. Numbers are Arabic. Why do all of you want the terrorists to win? If you really love Amurika, we'll have to go back to hash marks or Roman Numerals....and no Algebra.
@RandomHookup: Maybe in France and Arabia where you lefties live. They're called, \"Murikan numbers\" in REAL Amurika.
Wow, that's how much they cost? I always thought that was how many calories were in the food. Maybe that explains the recent weight gain.....
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@SafetyMachete_GitEmSteveDave: And also explains the inexplicably high bill at the end of your meal?
Our inability to solve word problem has come back to bite us in the ass.
Doesn't work for me--if I see a menu with just numerals and no punctuation or decimal places, I think, \"whoa, expensive--back away.\"
I hate it when restaurants leave off the dollar symbol. I don't think it looks elegant, just different or incomplete. Also, it is ambigous. I've always wanted to attempt to pay in some alternate form of currency, maybe wampum or seashells.
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@swearint: Ha funny point. I'm sure at one point in time their will be some jack*ss who will argue that there should be some sort of indictation on the menu as to what form of currency the numbers on the menu are referring to when they try and pay for their bill in monopoly money.
I actually don't think I have ever noticed if there was or was not a dollar sign or a decimal point on my menu.
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@swearint: It's ambigous? How difficult is it to ascertain that, if you are in a restaurant in the US, they accept US currency?
@nakedscience: I was being a bit facetious, but for fun can I then legitimately assume that it is in cents rather than dollars?
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I wonder when McDonald's will tap into this research and say \"Is your order correct on the drive-thru order screen? This is a BigMac for 3, medium fries for 1 and a large Coke for 2?
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@savdavid: Or if they were to elegantly write out the amounts in words - cursive on the drive-thru screen would probably end up looking like a game of space invaders.
Quarter Pounder avec fromage 4
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@H3ion: Shouldn't that be Royale avec Fromage? Seeing as they use the metric system in France, and wouldn't know what the f@#! a quarter pounder is. I mean, I know it'd be an american menu, but still, have to keep up appearances, non?
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@larrymac: I hate that $14.5 thing! It's one of my major pet peeves about hipster hang outs after the awful house music. a) It doesn't make sense for them to have decimals in their prices when you know the prices are inflated to hell already. b) If their menus got any more pretentious you could hang them on the wall and call them art. They might as well just round it up to $15. (Or \"15\" as they tend to do.)
@Robobot:
Maybe they did a mail merge for their menu and they didn't have the column format correct in Excel :P
If you need to ask, you can't afford it.
It continues to amaze me how easily people are fooled. It makes me wonder about the Calorie counts on menus that some states are enacting...if people aren't smart enough to know that \"15\" means the same thing as \"$15.00,\" how likely are they to understand the concept of a \"Calorie?\"
@David Brodbeck: You mean being that a Calorie is actually a kilo calorie, and given that the specific heat of water is about 4.184 Joules per gram that means your typical 250 Calorie donut is actually about 1,000,000 Joules?
Heh, I enjoyed doing that conversion for people after learning it in HS chem*. If you want to succeed in your diet, count everything in Joules instead of Calories, it creates terrifyingly high numbers.
*Disclaimer: HS chem was a long time ago folks, be nice if my rough numbers here aren't quite right. ;)
@SafetyMachete_GitEmSteveDave: Food is generally labeled in kilocalories, or Calories. It would be confusing if anyone outside of scientific circles ever actually used small-c calories for anything. ;)
Maybe it's just me, but whenever I see a menu with the prices written as whole numbers/words/sans dollar signs/whatever, I immediately begin watching the costs more closely, because I'm fairly certain that it's going to be a more expensive meal than usual.
@ophmarketing: I have the same reaction anytime I see \"Market\" after the price of something. I understand what they're trying to do, but the Spidey sense goes up.
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Restaurants that put \"18\" on their menus instead of \"$17.95\" tend to be the type for which \"18\" is the price of an appetizer.
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I notice this when I go to more upscale restaurants and I'm okay with it. Whether it brings in more money from me or not is irrelevant - I first noticed this among upscale casual and upscale places, so isn't it logical most people would spend more money there anyway? Ordering a bottle of wine at Outback clearly isn't the same as ordering a bottle of wine at Farmhouse, Ruth's Chris, or Morton's.
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So Cornell did a study at one high-end restaurant by giving customers different menus and the result was 8% higher spending on menus without dollar signs. Doesn't sound very scientific. How many customers where there in total? Did the menu include an unusually expensive item where just a few orders would skew the results?
When I'm in a high-end restaurant, I'm not looking at price, it's more what sounds more attractive. (But I do notice the $60 mac and cheese w shaved truffle...)
@Hoss: The Mac and Cheese is $10. The truffles are the other $50.
The best soup I've ever had was cream corn soup with truffle oil at Townhall restaurant in San Francisco. Amazing soup. Never underestimate the effect truffles can have on a meal. It's pure decadence with a super high price tag.
But the soup was only $9 - er, 9.
@pecan 3.14159265: It's unlikely that that the truffle oil ever made contact w a real truffle. But I agree, it's a nice flavor
@Hoss: Oh I know, and it's precisely why the soup was only $9. Still, real truffles are extremely, ridiculously expensive for commonfolk so I'm good with truffle oil as a substitute.
I remember reading about this in either \"Freaknomics\", or \"Predictable Irrationality\", that is, when the concept of currency is abstracted even just a little bit, people tend to spend a lot more because the brain no longer associates the task at hand with money any more.
I ran into this same problem in Japan just a few weeks ago. The exchange rate for JPY to USD is drop-dead simple: At the time it was 95 Y = 1 USD, so basically a yen is a penny. 1000 Y = $10. Despite this trivial exchange rate, I found myself spending money like crazy, only realizing afterward what I'd really spent, and how expensive everything was.
What was interesting is that when I went to S. Korea, where the exchange rate was 1000 KRW = .78 USD, or basically 1000W = 4/5 USD, I did a lot better, either because I'd started to actually think about exchange rates, or because it took longer to calculate Price/1000 * 4/5.
@ludwigk: when the concept of currency is abstracted even just a little bit, people tend to spend a lot more because the brain no longer associates the task at hand with money any more.
I think that's one of the reasons why casinos like chips. It's easier to put down a chip worth $100 (or, for me, $20) than a bill of the same value. Especially if you have to count out several bills every time.
I'm sure there are security advantages as well, but I think the symbolic abstraction of currency is also important.
@ludwigk: I'm not sure that your problem in Japan was completely because of not associating the yen with money. Many things are just plain more expensive there. Also, the presentation is better, which can lure you into spending more than you would otherwise.
However, it is also possible to spend significantly less for many things there than it is in the US.
This is a very cheap slide of hand routine. Like when a car dealer takes your keys and does not give them back.
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I have to admit I just did this today for lunch. I read the menu and saw 23 for the price, which I knew to be the price in dollars.
Still ordered it anyway, when I would have never, ever paid so much for an entree before. Then afterward when I got the bill, my mind screamed 23 dollars, are you sniffing glue!?!?!
I guess sometimes even when you are conscious of a decision, your sub-conscious can still override you. Scary!
@eb0nyknight: Are you sure it was the numbers overriding your sensibility? I mean, maybe that was the most appetizing and tempting thing on the menu. Did you have something else you liked more and didn't get?
Slightly off-topic but relevant, this technique works as well when telling a customer a price. I worked in sales at one time. Instead of saying it's \"one hundred DOLLARS\" I was taught to say it's \"one hundred.\" Any time you remind a person about the DOLLARS they're spending they're likely to spend less.
But smart consumers read Consumerist so we know about these tricks!
As long as the price is there who cares. They should make it a requirement that places put prices on their menus, especially drink menus.
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Don't worry, in another year or two that 42 next to the item will be the number of zeros in the price and there won't be containers big enough to carry the cash you will need so everything will have to be charged.
But only the ultra-rich, and government employees will have credit cards. The rest of us will be hanging out outside the kitchen for scraps.
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@nakedscience: Aren't you the one who goes completely nuts when someone even hints at how stupid HIPAA and fences around pools are? The irony is overwhelming.
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Wow..I wonder if studies show that half-naked women in advertisements sell more products to male consumers?
I hate when places do this. No price on the glass of coke = 4.50 coke.
This has been known for many years and is not dependent on the level of restaurant. It works the same for both a Dennys and Le Cirque. I would also tell restaurant people that 7.99 is smarter pricing than 7.95. That is 4 cents pure profit that psychologically mean the same thing to people. In other words, nobody leaves a restaurant for a 4 cent pricing variance.
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I create menus for restaurants (I am the graphic designer) and for any higher end location, we always do this. It really does bring in more money.
@Porcelina:
amateurs...
I think the results of this study are even more obvious than the researchers realize.
People who go into expensive restaurants tend to spend more -- regardless of how the menu prices are set up.
Most expensive restaurants have very nice menus. They are simple, elegant, and reflect a since of poise, dignity, blah, blah, blah. You're regular price-aware Jack-In-The-Box crowd isn't likely to go there, expect for very special occasions.
From what I've read it is assumed that the researchers have a good test environment. If they gave 1/3 of a restaurant menus with \"$20\"; one third menus with \"Twenty Dollars\"; and one third menus with \"20\" -- and they did it over the course of an entire week I might be impressed and interested in the study. Unfortunately, it's difficult for me to appreciate a lot of \"studies\" out there today based just on what they tell me. If I don't have a good understanding on HOW the study was done, it's not worth noting. We all know about statistics -- you can make them reveal anything you like if you just show and hide the right configuration of data. Most researchers (and pollsters) first come up with an answer (what they want the final result to be) and then they nit-pick through statical data pulling information that supports their already-determined-conclusion and tossing away any information that doesn't support it. Pollsters use trick questions to get the results they want.
@Porcelina: Do yo do that thing where the concept of two decimal places gets thrown out the window too? I hate that. If some uber-trendy appetizer costs $14.50, then show me that, not \"14.5\"
(not venting at Porcelina so much as at \"things I hate about menus\")
@Porcelina: I like taking symbols out of my amateur design works simply because it looks better that way.
@Porcelina: Do you do the Arabic numerals without currency signs, or spell it out?