As opposed to the Dollar Menu
The art of the restaurateur, it appears, extends to the preparation of the menu as well:
Unless a restaurant wants to frighten its customers, the price should always be at the very end of a menu description and should not be in any way highlighted.
A study published in the spring by Dr. [Sheryl E.] Kimes and other researchers at Cornell found that when the prices were given with dollar signs, customers — the research subjects dined at St. Andrew’s Cafe at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. — spent less than when no dollar signs appeared. The study, published in the Cornell Hospitality Report, also found that customers spent significantly more when the price was listed in numerals without dollar signs, as in “14.00″ or “14,” than when it included the word “dollar,” as in “Fourteen dollars.” Apparently even the word “dollar” can trigger what is known as “the pain of paying.”
Not having eaten out lately, I went hunting for menus, and OPUS Prime Steakhouse up on Memorial does exactly this: all menu items, excluding seafood priced at market rates, are listed in numerals without dollar signs.
Although restaurateur Danny Meyer says the cents are better left off:
Mr. Meyer said that in his view, adding zeros to the price, as in 14.00, is not a good idea because “there’s no reason to have pennies if you’re not using pennies, and it takes the price from being two digits into four digits, even if the two last digits are zeros. It’s irrelevant, and the number could feel more important, which is not a menu writer’s goal.”
But does it make the price look larger? Does “14.00″ look more expensive than “14.-” or simply “14″? (Incidentally, $14 won’t buy you an entree at OPUS.)
And if you for some reason are using pennies? Says menu consultant Gregg Rapp:
[I]f a restaurant wants to use prices that include cents, like $9.99 or $9.95 (without the dollar sign, of course), he strongly recommends .95, which he said “is a friendlier price,” whereas .99 is “cornier.”
Suddenly I’m starting to appreciate Arby’s five-for-5.55 special.
(Seen at Pratie Place.)
McGehee »
28 December 2009 · 9:12 am
“Menu consultant”…?
When I write the Great American Dictionary, “consultant” will be defined as “a charlatan whose job is to overthink matters that actually need to underthought.”
Lisa Paul »
28 December 2009 · 11:58 pm
The most expensive restaurant we ever went to was in Florence, Italy. As the woman, and presumably “the date”, I was given a menu with NO prices. My husband got the menu with prices. I’m told this is common practice in places with Michelin Stars.