3 ms·

> pho So when you order pho at a restaurant they have purposely named it pho instead of soup in an attempt to sound more "high class?" I'm sorry, but this seem

by pyre 11y ago

> pho So when you order pho at a restaurant they have purposely named it pho instead of soup in an attempt to sound more "high class?" I'm sorry, but this seems like an extreme view. Most of those words exist to describe something specific. Do you expect to see "A bunch of vegetables cooked in water" or "vegetable soup" on the menu? Is the later an attempt to charge you more? Take gazpacho as another example. It's a specific type of soup. You can't complain about this anymore than complaining that the menu says "vegetable soup" instead of just "soup." They have to describe the food adequately to you so that you know what you're getting.

logfromblammo 11y ago
No, I'm saying that when a chain restaurant with a psychologist on staff drafts the new menus, they will look at the entry for "Pho - Vietnamese rice noodle soup", and edit it to say "Pho - Vietnamese rice noodles in beef broth" instead. "Normal" restaurants don't know all the tricks to get customers to spend more money, but businesses for whom that marginal 1% of revenues is significant will absolutely pick over their menus looking for loaded words and design tweaks. If you have ever seen a smiley face on your receipt, that is a psych trick. It is experimentally proven to increase tips for female servers in midscale casual dining restaurants. Squat, smile, mimic. Push appetizers, booze, and desserts. Say you enjoy a dish yourself. Touch customers on the shoulder. Tell a joke. Pose a brainteaser. If a server does any of those things to you, they may have done their tip-boosting research. Menu tweaks are pretty simple, actually: - put cheaper, high-margin items near the most expensive thing on your menu - create seasonal specials - introduce new menu items as specials, sides, or appetizers rather than as an entree - draw boxes around the popular items, or highlight them in some way - carefully match descriptive tone with the desired clientele - destroy all currency symbols - suggest beverage pairings with the entree listing - make high-margin items more discoverable - chunk your menu into graspable categories; a giant pile of items should form a tree rather than a flat list - make the most expensive thing on your menu more expensive The word "soup" is a psychologically loaded word. You should only be using it on your menus if your overall marketing strategy is to attract value-based consumers.
- pyre 11y ago
  > "Pho - Vietnamese rice noodle soup", and edit it to say "Pho - Vietnamese rice noodles in beef broth" instead But in your original post you included "pho" in the list of words that restaurants use to replace the word "soup." In this example "Pho" is not being used as a replacement for "soup."
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    I do not think you understood what I was trying to say. Quite a lot of people do not know restaurant dishes by their proper names. If you invent a name for your menu item, or use an existing name not common in the vernacular, you avoid most psychological associations with those words. You can describe a Reuben without ever using the words "sandwich", "meat", or "bread", for instance. Reuben: corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, and Russian dressing on rye; lightly toasted You can even avoid saying "beef", "cheese", or "dressing". Reuben: cured brisket, sauerkraut, Emmentaler, and Thousand Island on marbled rye; lightly toasted "Reuben" is not a replacement for "sandwich". That's what it is, after all. But for this particular menu item, no one ever reads the word "sandwich", nor are they likely to say it when ordering. And when that word is not present, people are less likely to associate the restaurant dish with the thing they can almost certainly make at home at lower cost. That's the whole point. You're trying to avoid activating certain areas of the human brain that tend to rein in impulses and encourage activation of areas that stimulate reward-seeking behaviors. It isn't rocket science, but it is a science. People get paid to experiment on how to encourage people to spend more money in retail stores, and the results they get are often significant enough to sell to businesses. Once you can see these particular fnords, you notice them everywhere. It's one of the reasons why I can hardly stand eating in casual dining chain restaurants any more: I see puppet strings attached to everything, from the moment I see the building to the second I leave.

by pyre 11y ago

logfromblammo 11y ago

No, I'm saying that when a chain restaurant with a psychologist on staff drafts the new menus, they will look at the entry for "Pho - Vietnamese rice noodle soup", and edit it to say "Pho - Vietnamese rice noodles in beef broth" instead. "Normal" restaurants don't know all the tricks to get customers to spend more money, but businesses for whom that marginal 1% of revenues is significant will absolutely pick over their menus looking for loaded words and design tweaks. If you have ever seen a smiley face on your receipt, that is a psych trick. It is experimentally proven to increase tips for female servers in midscale casual dining restaurants. Squat, smile, mimic. Push appetizers, booze, and desserts. Say you enjoy a dish yourself. Touch customers on the shoulder. Tell a joke. Pose a brainteaser. If a server does any of those things to you, they may have done their tip-boosting research. Menu tweaks are pretty simple, actually: - put cheaper, high-margin items near the most expensive thing on your menu - create seasonal specials - introduce new menu items as specials, sides, or appetizers rather than as an entree - draw boxes around the popular items, or highlight them in some way - carefully match descriptive tone with the desired clientele - destroy all currency symbols - suggest beverage pairings with the entree listing - make high-margin items more discoverable - chunk your menu into graspable categories; a giant pile of items should form a tree rather than a flat list - make the most expensive thing on your menu more expensive The word "soup" is a psychologically loaded word. You should only be using it on your menus if your overall marketing strategy is to attract value-based consumers.

pyre 11y ago
> "Pho - Vietnamese rice noodle soup", and edit it to say "Pho - Vietnamese rice noodles in beef broth" instead But in your original post you included "pho" in the list of words that restaurants use to replace the word "soup." In this example "Pho" is not being used as a replacement for "soup."
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  I do not think you understood what I was trying to say. Quite a lot of people do not know restaurant dishes by their proper names. If you invent a name for your menu item, or use an existing name not common in the vernacular, you avoid most psychological associations with those words. You can describe a Reuben without ever using the words "sandwich", "meat", or "bread", for instance. Reuben: corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, and Russian dressing on rye; lightly toasted You can even avoid saying "beef", "cheese", or "dressing". Reuben: cured brisket, sauerkraut, Emmentaler, and Thousand Island on marbled rye; lightly toasted "Reuben" is not a replacement for "sandwich". That's what it is, after all. But for this particular menu item, no one ever reads the word "sandwich", nor are they likely to say it when ordering. And when that word is not present, people are less likely to associate the restaurant dish with the thing they can almost certainly make at home at lower cost. That's the whole point. You're trying to avoid activating certain areas of the human brain that tend to rein in impulses and encourage activation of areas that stimulate reward-seeking behaviors. It isn't rocket science, but it is a science. People get paid to experiment on how to encourage people to spend more money in retail stores, and the results they get are often significant enough to sell to businesses. Once you can see these particular fnords, you notice them everywhere. It's one of the reasons why I can hardly stand eating in casual dining chain restaurants any more: I see puppet strings attached to everything, from the moment I see the building to the second I leave.