In “Menu Mind Games,” William Poundstone dissects this Balthazar menu (full size PDF) and tells you the logic behind its design.
Can you guess the tricks being used here? Click image to find out.
The piece offers a revealing look at how restaurants use typography and layout to drive customers toward high priced items. Also interesting is the strange jargon used by industry insiders, like puzzles, anchors, stars, and plowhorses.
A star is a popular, high-profit item—in other words, an item for which customers are willing to pay a good deal more than it costs to make. A puzzle is high-profit but unpopular; a plowhorse is the opposite, popular yet unprofitable. Consultants try to turn puzzles into stars, nudge customers away from plowhorses, and convince everyone that the prices on the menu are more reasonable than they look.
Related:
Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It) by William Poundstone [Amazon]
Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping by Paco Underhill [Amazon]
Matt Linderman wrote this on Dec 17 2009 There are 10 comments.
Mike 17 Dec 09
More and more often i tend to take my dollars to places that are not trying to trick me at every turn.
Anonymous Coward 17 Dec 09
So you never leave the house, Mike?
Anonymous Coward 17 Dec 09
Direct link to the menu:
http://balthazarny.com/menus/dinner.pdf
mike 17 Dec 09
Recently an indie theater opened in my city(Detroit) called Burton Theater http://www.burtontheatre.com/nowplaying/ they have fair prices and good movies.
My most stand out experience i had was my first time visiting and their creditcard machine was down and I had no cash. At any Star or AMC theater they would have said tough shit or go find a ATM but the Burton fellas instead apologized over and over to me, let me in for free with a popcorn and a drink! since then I have been back every week for the past two months. As GaryV says i really do think we are living in the thankyou-economy.
Morley 17 Dec 09
While I don’t doubt that these tactics are effective, I wonder if they’ve been tested (or retested recently). A lot of the tips sounds like they could easily have wandered from the murky realm of consultant “best practices,” like “indefinite comparison… also feels like an indulgence.”
Don Schenck 17 Dec 09
Who orders from a menu???
I either ask for something, or ask them to suggest something. I almost always toss out their first suggestion, since it’ll be high dollar only … and, instead, make it clear that I want their (the server’s) favorite.
Then again, my cooking is better than just about any restaurant out there, which is why I mostly know cook at home (while drinking scotch and listening to The Rat Pack).
Cheers!
George 17 Dec 09
Fascinating. I never know so much thought went into menu design. But it makes sense to use the design to sell high profit items.
Bill Rice 17 Dec 09
Ahh…what can we learn about Web (marketing) landing pages from this example. A lot, I bet.
Shashikant 18 Dec 09
A restaurant chain in India has a unique menu. The prices are printed in words! I wrote about it on my blog. (Sorry for poor quality photo.)
http://bechalis.blogspot.com/2008/05/innovative-menu-card.html
Funu 18 Dec 09
Remind me to take the garbage out tonight…
This discussion is closed.