9 ms·

Restaurant menu tricks (2020)

115 points by marc__1 5y ago

injidup 5y ago
The most obvious trick is that there is always at least one crazy priced dish on the menu that almost nobody ever orders but it is placed there so that in comparison everything else looks like a great deal.
- gregoriol 5y ago
  Like the iPhone Pro Max
  - glup 5y ago
    Completely inedible.
    - Threeve303 5y ago
      They just don't make them like they used to
swader999 5y ago
Some of the best restaurants are the ones that are hopelessly bad at this kind of marketing and instead get by with great cooking. Small towns sometimes have these gems hiding away if you can find them.
- namelessoracle 5y ago
  In fact people i know and myself see not using these tricks as a stronger signal of good food. After all the restaurant is going all in on their food instead of any tricks for the items on their menu.
  - lordnacho 5y ago
    I always joked that my parents' restaurant was authentic due to the spelling errors on the menu. I think it's actually for some truth to it, and perhaps Berksons paradox is the explanation. If you either make good food or market well, and there's selection based on a frontier of a mix of the two, you end up creating a correlation even where none existed in the underlying set. So places with crap marketing that survive are likely to be doing so because the food makes up for it.
    - Raidion 5y ago
      See every cheap (but tremendously tasty) mexican food taco truck or stand! I personally have noticed an "uncanny valley" of restaurants, where I'd much rather eat cheaply (see Chick-fil-a, taco trucks, local pizza shops, or a lot of Asian spots) or expensively (locally renowned restaurants) and ignore most everything in between. It's hard to pay 25 dollars for an meal when it's going to be good but nothing special, when you could pay ~15 for something you'd enjoy just as much. The higher end resturants provide the "novel" experiences and flavors that make spending $35+ worth it.
      - benjohnson 5y ago
        Agreed! This quote from Noel Coward springs to mind: "I'll go through life either first class or third, but never in second."
      - openthc 5y ago
        I went to Ontario (California) for a consult gig. My host asked what I wanted for dinner and I suggested tacos. So he took me to some mall, with the fanciest Mexican resturant I've ever seen -- and all these really cool looking people in the outdoor seating, with fancy drinks. I said: "Ali, fuck this place. let me try" -- then we poped to this place: Fredy's Tacos (https://www.yelp.com/biz/fredys-tacos-restaurant-ontario https://www.yelp.com/biz/fredys-tacos-restaurant-ontario). My guy was a little nervous to get in there. Tacos == BOMB!; Tortas == AMAZING!!! And the beers (Pacifico) were in a cooler outside the counter area, so when I said "un otro" the cook (Fredy?) just pointed like "get it yourself". `11/10 experience, muy authentico
- vostok 5y ago
  How do you find these small town gems in the US? I've lived in a very expensive city and a medium cost of living city in the US and the lower quality of restaurants is the biggest difference for me. There are some very famous and very expensive restaurants, but even those places have been disappointing too frequently. It's often something really basic like the food being too salty. This wasn't as much of a problem in the very expensive city. It's unlikely that my taste buds have gotten more sensitive because I lived in the more expensive city at a younger age and taste buds get less sensitive as you get older to my knowledge. Almost every attempt at finding a small town gem has not really worked out for me in the US. In countries like France, I know that I can find small town gems just by checking the Michelin guide. I can go to Vonnas (population 3000) and find a great restaurant just by checking the Michelin guide. I would love to do that in the US.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    In the US, it's probably most likely to be regional food. Like I've had good Southwestern food in smaller places in New Mexico. On the other hand, not really middle of nowhere small. In my experience, the pickings are pretty slim in most small towns.
    - vostok 5y ago
      I would love to hear how to find these places! I'm in the midwest, but I'm willing to travel for food. Southwestern, tacos, Boreal, tagine, American, sandwiches, Polish, sushi, Tamil, no cuisine. It's all good to me. Some farms and wineries have restaurants out here, but they don't have too many reviews so it's hard to tell if they're good or not.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        If you're staying in a B&B, the host will often have a list of recommended places. Yes, reviews are hit and miss, although still better than nothing. You do have to sort through a lot. I live in a small town and the pickings in general are slim. But, there's a good restaurant (yes, attached to a winery) maybe 20 minutes down the road.
mbtamuli 5y ago
https://archive.is/6TDBP https://archive.is/6TDBP
Freak_NL 5y ago
There is some signalling menus can do with just the prices too: € 12,75 OK, nothing fancy. € 13 Right, no cents (works with pounds and dollars too obviously). Restaurant is a bit more upscale, or would like to look the part. 13 Very modern, possibly posh, certainly arrogant in its branding (really off-putting when used by a coffee joint or pastry shop). (no prices) Yeah, not for the likes of most us. Special bonus example for Europeans: E 12,75 Restaurant owner asked his nephew to type out the menu or similar. Food could still be good though.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Yeah if you put just a number, no unities and no decimals my opinion of this restaurant is also going to be just an integer number, below 1. Like this https://www.brooklynbarmenus.com/ https://www.brooklynbarmenus.com/ I think it might be actually illegal to not have prices on menus
  - mellavora 5y ago
    Used to be there was the "gentlemans" and the "ladies" menu. Difference was the 'ladies' menu didn't have the prices. That was another time/age, but it was certainly legal.
    - ziml77 5y ago
      That actually seems useful. Not dividing by gender, but instead the idea of giving a different menu to the person who's paying and the one(s) who are being treated. It's tough placing an order when you're being taken out to dinner and can see the prices because you're going to avoid something you might really want if it's more expensive than the average of the menu.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        I think that would be very hard in practice without prior arrangement. The restaurant has no way of knowing the circumstances of the dinner and the person doing the paying. Getting the most expensive thing on the menu may be a stretch for the host or it may of no consequence. (And the server won't even know if you're splitting the bill.)
blhack 5y ago
I think there is a bell curve happening here. Very very cheap restaurants will have simple menus written on paper (and possibly laminated). Middle tier, chain restaurants (like the cheescake factory) will have heavy menus with elaborate food descriptions and departments of people who work on optimizing them. But then at the very high end, it actually wraps back around. The nicest restaurants I've been to will often have a paper menu, with a very, very small selection of things on it. My personal opinion is that some of these things are actually a counter-indicator. If you obviously put a lot of thought into your menu, bought an obnoxious folder for it, have lavish descriptions, etc. it's because you are leaning into the perception of your food/atmosphere, rather than the reality of it. To make my point: here is the menu for the french laundry: https://portlandfoodanddrink.com/because-we-all-need-to-see-the-french-laundry-menu/ https://portlandfoodanddrink.com/because-we-all-need-to-see-...
- 542458 5y ago
  Agreed. One of the best restaurants I’ve ever eaten at had a single 8.5x11 slip of paper for the main menu (and a weighty tome for the wine menu). Another place we never even got a menu - the food just started appearing, much to our confusion! Apparently it was a prix fixe multi-course meal arrangement, and you get whatever you get - the server had assumed we knew. The food was fabulous, but it took three hours longer than we had planned to spend.
  - bluefirebrand 5y ago
    > Apparently it was a prix fixe multi-course meal arrangement, and you get whatever you get I find this unfathomable. What if you have allergies? I guess just don't eat there. But the server assumed you knew? Wild.
    - L_Rahman 5y ago
      Places like this ask about your dietary restrictions during either the reservation or before the beginning of service. The chef will make on the fly adjustments based on each diner's needs. My brother and I went to Eleven Madison Park back in 2016 and mentioned my allergies ahead of time. Not only did they plan alternatives for me, they even included them in the printed out menu that they give to each diner as they leave as a memento of the meal.
indymike 5y ago
"The more description you have the higher the value of the item and the lower the price seems in the customer's head" I'm not sure having longer descriptions is so much a trick as it lets the customer buy with more confidence. The customer knows they are getting what they want, and when they get it, they know what to expect.
- xmprt 5y ago
  It's more like saying if you have a two great dishes and one has 5 ingredients but the other has 7 ingredients, you'll be able to charge more for the one with 7 ingredients because the customer feels like they're getting more bang for their buck.
philjohn 5y ago
An old boss of mine had a rule - he never ate at a restaurant that had pictures of the food, either on display, or in the menu. Interesting that the study cited says that pictures of the food make you mentally taste it.
- tyingq 5y ago
  Was the rule meant to, for example, help your boss lose weight? Hopefully it wasn't a rule that he/she thought meant better food. Ruling out restaurants with pictures of the food would zap quite a lot of my favorite places across my lifetime.
  - philjohn 5y ago
    I think it was him being a bit tongue in cheek - and maybe assuming food on menu's = less good.
  - avalys 5y ago
    In most of the US, “pictures of food on the menu” is associated with low-end but highly marketed national chains that serve large amounts of unexceptional food - Applebees, Cheesecake Factory, etc.
    - tyingq 5y ago
      Ah, ok. But it's also true for all the various strip-mall mom-and-pop Thai, Viet, Lebanese, etc, places I go to.
- mdoms 5y ago
  Your boss arbitrarily ruled out entire categories of food. All of the best Chinese and Malaysian restaurants, for example, will have pictures. It's just how they do it.
- JimTheMan 5y ago
  And Japan will have wax food representations of what they are about to cook for you! And their food is on the whole, amazing. Guess it goes to show how localised some of these rules are.
ehw3 5y ago
FWIW there is some commentary on this today on the Columbia "statsmodeling" blog: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/05/08/blast-from-the-past-2/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/05/08/blast-from...
thesz 5y ago
The main outcome from there, for me, at the very least, is that we all have synesthesia - ones have it stronger, others weaker. But we all have it. "Round fond is associated with sweeter taste" - this is it. Synesthesia helps make perception of world more vibrant and memorable.
vharuck 5y ago
Menu design is a great candidate for psychology experiments. It's easy to do A/B testing by giving different menus to different tables at the same time. The end goal is money spent or items sold, which is a simple number you'll always know exactly. However, you have to be careful to not overreach in inferring why people do things: >“The dollar sign is a pain point that reminds the diner that they are spending money,” says Allen. “By just using the figure, or even better, writing it out in words, it can reduce that pain.” This sounds like a rationalization. It could be true. But if I were a menu designer, I wouldn't try to use it to predict anything beyond including currency symbols.
- wolpoli 5y ago
  My personal experience with these menus is that, by excluding the dollar sign, writing the price out in words and misaligning the decimal point, I am unable to calculate the final cost of my meal without taking out my phone. In my case, that's how these menus reduce the pain.
rntz 5y ago
The article appears to misrepresent the result of a study it links to. From the article: > A study conducted by researchers in Switzerland found that a wine labelled with a difficult-to-read script was liked more by drinkers than the same wine carrying a simpler typeface. But from the abstract of the study linked to (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0950329315000671 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09503...): > Fluency was manipulated via an easy- or difficult-to-read font. Results showed that there was no effect of the consumption domain. However, the wine was liked more in the high-fluency condition compared to the low-fluency condition. Thus, the results indicate that a wine tastes better if the labeled visual information can be processed relatively fluently. Which is exactly the opposite.
- gumby 5y ago
  Thanks for checking this. I have in the past complained about bugs like this to a cousin of mine who works for the BBC. The response? "Hell, we're the press; what do you expect?" (At one point we discussed it in person and she said that she actually thinks the BBC standards are pretty high, but that's merely relatively high in an industry where the standards are low. I suppose the years have made her cynical).
- periheli0n 5y ago
  I found the article generally quite clickbaity. Is it a “trick” to use “grass-fed Angus steak with thick-cut rosemary fries“ rather than just say “steak and chips”, as the article claims? I don’t think so. The former is a more detailed description of what’s being offered. The latter refers to a much simpler meal.
mdoms 5y ago
I wouldn't believe a word of this nonsense. Anyone who is aware of the reproducibility crisis in soft psychological sciences would be very wary of it.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Lot of fairly commonsense stuff, there. The only really "scientific" stuff, seems to be the ability to crunch numbers, and calibrate the effect of menu design. Otherwise, the language used, looks a lot like what I see with fashion, or graphic design. A lot of associating emotional responses with design elements. The issue with that, is that a lot of these cues depend on societal culture. As in any craft, the designer needs to have a fairly good handle on their target audience. What I have come to absolutely loathe, have been the "QR code" menus that so many restaurants have adopted; citing COVID caution. I have gotten up and walked out of a couple of restaurants, because they insisted that I use my phone to scan a QR code on the table, and the phone's screen is immediately dominated by a massive advertisement or branding wank, and I need to scroll down to see the first items (which are often simple PDF scans of their printed menus -scans, not saved as PDF).
- zzo38computer 5y ago
  I have not been to the restaurant yet since COVID, but I dislike that too (for one thing, I don't have a cell phone). I think that they should use a slow updating display with the menu where anyone can see (and photograph, if they have a camera and want a copy). It may also help if you can purchase a printed copy of the menu.
lultimouomo 5y ago
> “Naming the farmer who grew the vegetables or the breed of a pig can help to add authenticity to a product,” says Spence. “Consumers take that as a sign of quality, even it has been made up.” That's an interesting use of the world authenticity.
zuhayeer 5y ago
The actual menu itself matters way less compared to Yelp photos and reviews (at least for me personally)

115 points by marc__1 5y ago

The most obvious trick is that there is always at least one crazy priced dish on the menu that almost nobody ever orders but it is placed there so that in comparison everything else looks like a great deal.

gregoriol 5y ago
Like the iPhone Pro Max
- glup 5y ago
  Completely inedible.
  - Threeve303 5y ago
    They just don't make them like they used to

swader999 5y ago

Some of the best restaurants are the ones that are hopelessly bad at this kind of marketing and instead get by with great cooking. Small towns sometimes have these gems hiding away if you can find them.

namelessoracle 5y ago
In fact people i know and myself see not using these tricks as a stronger signal of good food. After all the restaurant is going all in on their food instead of any tricks for the items on their menu.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  I always joked that my parents' restaurant was authentic due to the spelling errors on the menu. I think it's actually for some truth to it, and perhaps Berksons paradox is the explanation. If you either make good food or market well, and there's selection based on a frontier of a mix of the two, you end up creating a correlation even where none existed in the underlying set. So places with crap marketing that survive are likely to be doing so because the food makes up for it.
  - Raidion 5y ago
    See every cheap (but tremendously tasty) mexican food taco truck or stand! I personally have noticed an "uncanny valley" of restaurants, where I'd much rather eat cheaply (see Chick-fil-a, taco trucks, local pizza shops, or a lot of Asian spots) or expensively (locally renowned restaurants) and ignore most everything in between. It's hard to pay 25 dollars for an meal when it's going to be good but nothing special, when you could pay ~15 for something you'd enjoy just as much. The higher end resturants provide the "novel" experiences and flavors that make spending $35+ worth it.
    - benjohnson 5y ago
      Agreed! This quote from Noel Coward springs to mind: "I'll go through life either first class or third, but never in second."
    - openthc 5y ago
      I went to Ontario (California) for a consult gig. My host asked what I wanted for dinner and I suggested tacos. So he took me to some mall, with the fanciest Mexican resturant I've ever seen -- and all these really cool looking people in the outdoor seating, with fancy drinks. I said: "Ali, fuck this place. let me try" -- then we poped to this place: Fredy's Tacos (https://www.yelp.com/biz/fredys-tacos-restaurant-ontario https://www.yelp.com/biz/fredys-tacos-restaurant-ontario). My guy was a little nervous to get in there. Tacos == BOMB!; Tortas == AMAZING!!! And the beers (Pacifico) were in a cooler outside the counter area, so when I said "un otro" the cook (Fredy?) just pointed like "get it yourself". `11/10 experience, muy authentico
vostok 5y ago
How do you find these small town gems in the US? I've lived in a very expensive city and a medium cost of living city in the US and the lower quality of restaurants is the biggest difference for me. There are some very famous and very expensive restaurants, but even those places have been disappointing too frequently. It's often something really basic like the food being too salty. This wasn't as much of a problem in the very expensive city. It's unlikely that my taste buds have gotten more sensitive because I lived in the more expensive city at a younger age and taste buds get less sensitive as you get older to my knowledge. Almost every attempt at finding a small town gem has not really worked out for me in the US. In countries like France, I know that I can find small town gems just by checking the Michelin guide. I can go to Vonnas (population 3000) and find a great restaurant just by checking the Michelin guide. I would love to do that in the US.
- ghaff 5y ago
  In the US, it's probably most likely to be regional food. Like I've had good Southwestern food in smaller places in New Mexico. On the other hand, not really middle of nowhere small. In my experience, the pickings are pretty slim in most small towns.
  - vostok 5y ago
    I would love to hear how to find these places! I'm in the midwest, but I'm willing to travel for food. Southwestern, tacos, Boreal, tagine, American, sandwiches, Polish, sushi, Tamil, no cuisine. It's all good to me. Some farms and wineries have restaurants out here, but they don't have too many reviews so it's hard to tell if they're good or not.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      If you're staying in a B&B, the host will often have a list of recommended places. Yes, reviews are hit and miss, although still better than nothing. You do have to sort through a lot. I live in a small town and the pickings in general are slim. But, there's a good restaurant (yes, attached to a winery) maybe 20 minutes down the road.

mbtamuli 5y ago

https://archive.is/6TDBP https://archive.is/6TDBP

Freak_NL 5y ago

There is some signalling menus can do with just the prices too: € 12,75 OK, nothing fancy. € 13 Right, no cents (works with pounds and dollars too obviously). Restaurant is a bit more upscale, or would like to look the part. 13 Very modern, possibly posh, certainly arrogant in its branding (really off-putting when used by a coffee joint or pastry shop). (no prices) Yeah, not for the likes of most us. Special bonus example for Europeans: E 12,75 Restaurant owner asked his nephew to type out the menu or similar. Food could still be good though.

raverbashing 5y ago
Yeah if you put just a number, no unities and no decimals my opinion of this restaurant is also going to be just an integer number, below 1. Like this https://www.brooklynbarmenus.com/ https://www.brooklynbarmenus.com/ I think it might be actually illegal to not have prices on menus
- mellavora 5y ago
  Used to be there was the "gentlemans" and the "ladies" menu. Difference was the 'ladies' menu didn't have the prices. That was another time/age, but it was certainly legal.
  - ziml77 5y ago
    That actually seems useful. Not dividing by gender, but instead the idea of giving a different menu to the person who's paying and the one(s) who are being treated. It's tough placing an order when you're being taken out to dinner and can see the prices because you're going to avoid something you might really want if it's more expensive than the average of the menu.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      I think that would be very hard in practice without prior arrangement. The restaurant has no way of knowing the circumstances of the dinner and the person doing the paying. Getting the most expensive thing on the menu may be a stretch for the host or it may of no consequence. (And the server won't even know if you're splitting the bill.)

blhack 5y ago

I think there is a bell curve happening here. Very very cheap restaurants will have simple menus written on paper (and possibly laminated). Middle tier, chain restaurants (like the cheescake factory) will have heavy menus with elaborate food descriptions and departments of people who work on optimizing them. But then at the very high end, it actually wraps back around. The nicest restaurants I've been to will often have a paper menu, with a very, very small selection of things on it. My personal opinion is that some of these things are actually a counter-indicator. If you obviously put a lot of thought into your menu, bought an obnoxious folder for it, have lavish descriptions, etc. it's because you are leaning into the perception of your food/atmosphere, rather than the reality of it. To make my point: here is the menu for the french laundry: https://portlandfoodanddrink.com/because-we-all-need-to-see-the-french-laundry-menu/ https://portlandfoodanddrink.com/because-we-all-need-to-see-...

542458 5y ago
Agreed. One of the best restaurants I’ve ever eaten at had a single 8.5x11 slip of paper for the main menu (and a weighty tome for the wine menu). Another place we never even got a menu - the food just started appearing, much to our confusion! Apparently it was a prix fixe multi-course meal arrangement, and you get whatever you get - the server had assumed we knew. The food was fabulous, but it took three hours longer than we had planned to spend.
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  > Apparently it was a prix fixe multi-course meal arrangement, and you get whatever you get I find this unfathomable. What if you have allergies? I guess just don't eat there. But the server assumed you knew? Wild.
  - L_Rahman 5y ago
    Places like this ask about your dietary restrictions during either the reservation or before the beginning of service. The chef will make on the fly adjustments based on each diner's needs. My brother and I went to Eleven Madison Park back in 2016 and mentioned my allergies ahead of time. Not only did they plan alternatives for me, they even included them in the printed out menu that they give to each diner as they leave as a memento of the meal.

indymike 5y ago

"The more description you have the higher the value of the item and the lower the price seems in the customer's head" I'm not sure having longer descriptions is so much a trick as it lets the customer buy with more confidence. The customer knows they are getting what they want, and when they get it, they know what to expect.

xmprt 5y ago
It's more like saying if you have a two great dishes and one has 5 ingredients but the other has 7 ingredients, you'll be able to charge more for the one with 7 ingredients because the customer feels like they're getting more bang for their buck.

philjohn 5y ago

An old boss of mine had a rule - he never ate at a restaurant that had pictures of the food, either on display, or in the menu. Interesting that the study cited says that pictures of the food make you mentally taste it.

tyingq 5y ago
Was the rule meant to, for example, help your boss lose weight? Hopefully it wasn't a rule that he/she thought meant better food. Ruling out restaurants with pictures of the food would zap quite a lot of my favorite places across my lifetime.
- philjohn 5y ago
  I think it was him being a bit tongue in cheek - and maybe assuming food on menu's = less good.
- avalys 5y ago
  In most of the US, “pictures of food on the menu” is associated with low-end but highly marketed national chains that serve large amounts of unexceptional food - Applebees, Cheesecake Factory, etc.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    Ah, ok. But it's also true for all the various strip-mall mom-and-pop Thai, Viet, Lebanese, etc, places I go to.
mdoms 5y ago
Your boss arbitrarily ruled out entire categories of food. All of the best Chinese and Malaysian restaurants, for example, will have pictures. It's just how they do it.
JimTheMan 5y ago
And Japan will have wax food representations of what they are about to cook for you! And their food is on the whole, amazing. Guess it goes to show how localised some of these rules are.

ehw3 5y ago

FWIW there is some commentary on this today on the Columbia "statsmodeling" blog: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/05/08/blast-from-the-past-2/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/05/08/blast-from...

thesz 5y ago

The main outcome from there, for me, at the very least, is that we all have synesthesia - ones have it stronger, others weaker. But we all have it. "Round fond is associated with sweeter taste" - this is it. Synesthesia helps make perception of world more vibrant and memorable.

vharuck 5y ago

Menu design is a great candidate for psychology experiments. It's easy to do A/B testing by giving different menus to different tables at the same time. The end goal is money spent or items sold, which is a simple number you'll always know exactly. However, you have to be careful to not overreach in inferring why people do things: >“The dollar sign is a pain point that reminds the diner that they are spending money,” says Allen. “By just using the figure, or even better, writing it out in words, it can reduce that pain.” This sounds like a rationalization. It could be true. But if I were a menu designer, I wouldn't try to use it to predict anything beyond including currency symbols.

wolpoli 5y ago
My personal experience with these menus is that, by excluding the dollar sign, writing the price out in words and misaligning the decimal point, I am unable to calculate the final cost of my meal without taking out my phone. In my case, that's how these menus reduce the pain.

rntz 5y ago

The article appears to misrepresent the result of a study it links to. From the article: > A study conducted by researchers in Switzerland found that a wine labelled with a difficult-to-read script was liked more by drinkers than the same wine carrying a simpler typeface. But from the abstract of the study linked to (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0950329315000671 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09503...): > Fluency was manipulated via an easy- or difficult-to-read font. Results showed that there was no effect of the consumption domain. However, the wine was liked more in the high-fluency condition compared to the low-fluency condition. Thus, the results indicate that a wine tastes better if the labeled visual information can be processed relatively fluently. Which is exactly the opposite.

gumby 5y ago
Thanks for checking this. I have in the past complained about bugs like this to a cousin of mine who works for the BBC. The response? "Hell, we're the press; what do you expect?" (At one point we discussed it in person and she said that she actually thinks the BBC standards are pretty high, but that's merely relatively high in an industry where the standards are low. I suppose the years have made her cynical).
periheli0n 5y ago
I found the article generally quite clickbaity. Is it a “trick” to use “grass-fed Angus steak with thick-cut rosemary fries“ rather than just say “steak and chips”, as the article claims? I don’t think so. The former is a more detailed description of what’s being offered. The latter refers to a much simpler meal.

mdoms 5y ago

I wouldn't believe a word of this nonsense. Anyone who is aware of the reproducibility crisis in soft psychological sciences would be very wary of it.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Lot of fairly commonsense stuff, there. The only really "scientific" stuff, seems to be the ability to crunch numbers, and calibrate the effect of menu design. Otherwise, the language used, looks a lot like what I see with fashion, or graphic design. A lot of associating emotional responses with design elements. The issue with that, is that a lot of these cues depend on societal culture. As in any craft, the designer needs to have a fairly good handle on their target audience. What I have come to absolutely loathe, have been the "QR code" menus that so many restaurants have adopted; citing COVID caution. I have gotten up and walked out of a couple of restaurants, because they insisted that I use my phone to scan a QR code on the table, and the phone's screen is immediately dominated by a massive advertisement or branding wank, and I need to scroll down to see the first items (which are often simple PDF scans of their printed menus -scans, not saved as PDF).

zzo38computer 5y ago
I have not been to the restaurant yet since COVID, but I dislike that too (for one thing, I don't have a cell phone). I think that they should use a slow updating display with the menu where anyone can see (and photograph, if they have a camera and want a copy). It may also help if you can purchase a printed copy of the menu.

lultimouomo 5y ago

> “Naming the farmer who grew the vegetables or the breed of a pig can help to add authenticity to a product,” says Spence. “Consumers take that as a sign of quality, even it has been made up.” That's an interesting use of the world authenticity.

zuhayeer 5y ago

The actual menu itself matters way less compared to Yelp photos and reviews (at least for me personally)