Comments on: Menu Engineering

By: chappy

chappy — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:02:51 +0000

Both with economics backgrounds, my wife and I have a (probably simplistic and dubious) method to combat this practice on the wine menu. We always order the second or third least expensive bottle of wine. We hypothesize that the cheapest and most expensive bottles are probably being sold at a huge profit, but of course, if our practice is at all common, I wouldn’t be surprised if our strategy is more an aspiration than an actually deal.

On another note, I question the value of menu engineering. In a city like DC there are so many good restaurants that I can only imagine that restaurant food is a highly competative market. How much value added do the consultants actually add? What about prix fixe menus where people have little or no choice?

By: Michael Robinson

Michael Robinson — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:47:47 +0000

“Retailers have understood this psychology for years, of course, while economists are just catching up.”

Just catching up?

“Prospect Theory” was published, what, 30 years ago, now?

Although in fairness, “economists” appear only to have discovered just last year that default events don’t follow a Gaussian distribution. I mean, who would have guessed that?

By: Brooks

Brooks — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:50:27 +0000

Re: there’s a whole science to writing the mouth-watering prose describing each item.

Reminded me of what I saw a while back on a Penn & Teller show. See below (warning: a bit of profanity)