5 ms·

The NY Times probably would be uniquely influential for fine-dining because it's likely one of the few sources of shared information. If you invite someone to

The NY Times probably would be uniquely influential for fine-dining because it's likely one of the few sources of shared information. If you invite someone to an expensive restaurant that's just had a bad review, your invitation must mean either cluelessness or defiance. If you don't mean either of those two things, you should not choose that restaurant. You can't "opt out" of this system. It doesn't matter whether you believe the reviews are accurate. It doesn't matter whether you believe the other party believes the reviews are accurate. Because the review constitutes shared information, the logic of pluralistic ignorance applies. It's not clever to ignore shared information. It just leads you to communicate badly.

ghaff 10y ago
>If you invite someone to an expensive restaurant that's just had a bad review, your invitation must mean either cluelessness or defiance. How about you like the restaurant or you have recommendations from people whose tastes you share that like it? If I like a restaurant I really don't care what the newspaper or Yelp says. It's not so much defiance as disagreement. (Sure, if "the reviews" are bad for a restaurant, a movie, etc. the betting money is that it is, in fact, not that great barring other data to the contrary.)
saiya-jin 10y ago
business meetings? absolutely. anything else? meh, never enjoyed crowd sheepish mentality, no reasons to start with this. especially when things work like they do
Retric 10y ago
A huge swath of people ignore reviews by never reading them. They are only important because of how tight restaurants margins are so even a 5% dip is important.
- rasz_pl 10y ago
  > tight restaurants margins WAT????
  - treehau5 10y ago
    Not sure if trolling or... but restaurant margins are paper-thin. For example, my father, a restaurant owner for 35 years lost money on most of his offerings (the exceptions being the cheap stuff - chicken fingers, fries, hushpuppies, etc). Almost all profits were made off soft drinks. If people all of a sudden stopped ordering tea, coffee and soda, he would have gone out of business in under a week. This was true in all different venues he operated -- a sandwich shop, an upscale steakhouse, and the ever popular "fish camp" style of restaurant. The only exception was his pizza restaurant -- and he only made money when people ordered plain pepperoni pizza. Ironically, if they only ordered cheese, you had to put more cheese on the pizza to make up for the lost space the pepperoni took up, and cheese is the most expensive thing in a pizza restaurant by far, especially if you use anything that is remotely real.
    - jonathan_a 10y ago
      Fascinating. I guess what I'm trying to wrap my mind around is, how can the margins be paper-thin even at the very high-end places, where entres are > $40.
      - treehau5 10y ago
        Most of it has to do with waste, labor, logistics, and how far off the well-trodden path they go with respects to food orders. With respects to waste -- it's pretty obvious -- not everything can be made to order so every restaurant has prep-work. Some are better at predicting volume than others, so they waste less, but every restaurant wastes. As a concrete example if a restaurant wants to serve lasagna the whole day, they have to continually make lasagna the entire day, or risk disappointing customers. The pan they make at the end and at the beginning tends to go unused. Also with respect to waste there are everyday products we take forgranted that a restaurant probably uses anywhere from 100 to 300x more than your average household -- soap, towels are overused, water is constantly running, multiple thousand dollars of water and power bills are not uncommon, waste disposal fees for grease traps and recycling and cardboard. All of these are factored into the cost. Labor is obvious too -- you have to pay people to prepare and make the food. A basic restaurant that seats 100 people will have at least 1 prep cook, 2 line cooks, an expediter, a dishwasher, and a busboy. All are critical to ensuring the kitchen runs to acceptable speeds. All of this is on top of the executive and sous chef salaries you pay. Logistics and well trodden path: Logistics is what you have to pay for raw food products to get delivered to you and depending on your menu and what season it is things will be cheaper at certain times of the year -- restaurants do this better than others. What I mean by the "well trodden path" is -- the big restaurant food distributors (Your Syscos, PFGs, US Foods) really try to funnel you to their cash cow offerings and they tend to not be the good stuff - the organics, the grass-feds, etc. Ordering anything else is considered "premium" and comes with a hefty markup. Not using the big food distributors comes with its own laundry list of risks and considerations -- now you become a salesman and you have to advocate your restaurant, negotiate price, schedule deliveries, ensure your supplier is reliable, what if they go out of business? What if the local harvest is bad that year? (For this I truly admire those "farm to table" type places) I grew up in a restaurant. I have a passion for food and cooking and interacting with people. I would never want to be a restaurant owner. Restaurant failure rates are the absolute highest because the margins are so small -- upwards to 80%, and even 90% (NYC). It's crazy, not worth it. I became a software engineer instead.

ghaff 10y ago

>If you invite someone to an expensive restaurant that's just had a bad review, your invitation must mean either cluelessness or defiance. How about you like the restaurant or you have recommendations from people whose tastes you share that like it? If I like a restaurant I really don't care what the newspaper or Yelp says. It's not so much defiance as disagreement. (Sure, if "the reviews" are bad for a restaurant, a movie, etc. the betting money is that it is, in fact, not that great barring other data to the contrary.)

saiya-jin 10y ago

business meetings? absolutely. anything else? meh, never enjoyed crowd sheepish mentality, no reasons to start with this. especially when things work like they do

Retric 10y ago

A huge swath of people ignore reviews by never reading them. They are only important because of how tight restaurants margins are so even a 5% dip is important.

rasz_pl 10y ago
> tight restaurants margins WAT????
- treehau5 10y ago
  Not sure if trolling or... but restaurant margins are paper-thin. For example, my father, a restaurant owner for 35 years lost money on most of his offerings (the exceptions being the cheap stuff - chicken fingers, fries, hushpuppies, etc). Almost all profits were made off soft drinks. If people all of a sudden stopped ordering tea, coffee and soda, he would have gone out of business in under a week. This was true in all different venues he operated -- a sandwich shop, an upscale steakhouse, and the ever popular "fish camp" style of restaurant. The only exception was his pizza restaurant -- and he only made money when people ordered plain pepperoni pizza. Ironically, if they only ordered cheese, you had to put more cheese on the pizza to make up for the lost space the pepperoni took up, and cheese is the most expensive thing in a pizza restaurant by far, especially if you use anything that is remotely real.
  - jonathan_a 10y ago
    Fascinating. I guess what I'm trying to wrap my mind around is, how can the margins be paper-thin even at the very high-end places, where entres are > $40.
    - treehau5 10y ago
      Most of it has to do with waste, labor, logistics, and how far off the well-trodden path they go with respects to food orders. With respects to waste -- it's pretty obvious -- not everything can be made to order so every restaurant has prep-work. Some are better at predicting volume than others, so they waste less, but every restaurant wastes. As a concrete example if a restaurant wants to serve lasagna the whole day, they have to continually make lasagna the entire day, or risk disappointing customers. The pan they make at the end and at the beginning tends to go unused. Also with respect to waste there are everyday products we take forgranted that a restaurant probably uses anywhere from 100 to 300x more than your average household -- soap, towels are overused, water is constantly running, multiple thousand dollars of water and power bills are not uncommon, waste disposal fees for grease traps and recycling and cardboard. All of these are factored into the cost. Labor is obvious too -- you have to pay people to prepare and make the food. A basic restaurant that seats 100 people will have at least 1 prep cook, 2 line cooks, an expediter, a dishwasher, and a busboy. All are critical to ensuring the kitchen runs to acceptable speeds. All of this is on top of the executive and sous chef salaries you pay. Logistics and well trodden path: Logistics is what you have to pay for raw food products to get delivered to you and depending on your menu and what season it is things will be cheaper at certain times of the year -- restaurants do this better than others. What I mean by the "well trodden path" is -- the big restaurant food distributors (Your Syscos, PFGs, US Foods) really try to funnel you to their cash cow offerings and they tend to not be the good stuff - the organics, the grass-feds, etc. Ordering anything else is considered "premium" and comes with a hefty markup. Not using the big food distributors comes with its own laundry list of risks and considerations -- now you become a salesman and you have to advocate your restaurant, negotiate price, schedule deliveries, ensure your supplier is reliable, what if they go out of business? What if the local harvest is bad that year? (For this I truly admire those "farm to table" type places) I grew up in a restaurant. I have a passion for food and cooking and interacting with people. I would never want to be a restaurant owner. Restaurant failure rates are the absolute highest because the margins are so small -- upwards to 80%, and even 90% (NYC). It's crazy, not worth it. I became a software engineer instead.