I’m generally in favor of “cheap and cheerful” - that is, friendly efficiency. Doing elaborately inefficient things to justify higher prices is a turnoff. Unfo

I’m generally in favor of “cheap and cheerful” - that is, friendly efficiency. Doing elaborately inefficient things to justify higher prices is a turnoff. Unfortunately, from a restaurant’s point of view, they may care about customer satisfaction, but their incentives are to get more money per visit. A lot of things restaurants do make more sense from that perspective. For example, large portions can be seen as a way to justify moderately higher prices while keeping customers feeling like they got good value for their money. Elaborate, unnecessary service is a way to justify really high prices. And nowadays they care less about perception, so they just add extra changes.