How Restaurants Trick You Wake-Up Call-9/17/14 How menus trick you into spending more. Restaurants know that the right wording and layout can get you to shell out more money for the same entrée. Thats because higher priced and unhealthy items are strategically presented to look the most appetizing. Two recent and separate analyses of restaurant menus came up with strikingly similar conclusions. Restaurants are trying to guide your eye to certain items, even when cheaper or healthier options are flagged. Menu names with descriptive items sell better and lead you to believe that they taste better, according to a new study of 217 menus and selections of over 300 diners by researchers at Cornell University. The researchers cite a case where the names of restaurant menu items were changed to make them more exotic: The seafood filet, for example, became succulent Italian seafood filet, and red beans and rice became Cajun red beans and rice. Sales of these renamed items with descriptions rose by 28 percent and were rated as tastier, even though the recipes before and after were identical. Whats more, diners were also willing to spend an average of 12 percent more for a menu item with a fancy name. Any food item that attracts attention with bold, highlighted or a colored font, an item thats set apart in its own special box on the menu, or anything listed as a house favorite, is more likely to be ordered than an item listed next to it, the study found. The reason consumers should be concerned? In most cases, these are the least healthy items on the menu, says the studys co-author Brian Wansink, and author of Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life. Similar to the way supermarkets put the higher margin foods at eye level, menus place higher priced items where consumers will most likely see them. On a menu, this is often on the top-right or bottom-left. Menu items are also given exotic descriptions to make them seem worth greater than they actually are, and although images of food on a menu may be too down-market for some restaurants, those tantalizing photos often work. Surprisingly, restaurants provide low calorie labels on their menus that can actually cause people to choose higher calorie and also more expensive options, according to a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research. Most menus are complex, offering numerous dishes with lots of ingredients, so diners have come to expect low-calorie food to either taste bad or not fill them up. By calorie-organizing a menu, restaurants make it easier for people to use the general low-calorie label to dismiss all low-calorie options early in the decision process, the study concluded. “Restaurants may want to avoid using diet words to reduce consumers perceptions that the food tastes bad,. But at the same time they dont want to turn off a segment of consumers most restaurants are targeting -- that is, the health-conscious consumer. Buyer-beware!!! One of the reasons for these wake-up calls is to make you aware of the lies, tricks and manipulations that we are bombarded with on a daily basis by companies trying to get our money, or more of it! And that’s Bob’s Wake-Up Call for today……………….. robinalexis
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 20:08:37 +0000
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