When I first started this blog my sole intention was to make it all about the food. What it was, why I chose it, and how I cooked it. More importantly, I wanted to avoid letting it become a Big List Of Gripes (an acronym that, while unintentional, is often suitable), but when I read this article by Claire Robinson of the Food Network "exposing" the "tricks" that are often used by restaurants to increase sales I felt the need to rebut.
A quick Google query will tell you that Claire has had a full and noteworthy career. She earned her B. A. in Communications from the University of Memphis, where she also worked part time selling lotions and other beauty products. She also worked in both radio and television, and handled marketing for the University of Memphis’s athletic department. After a few years she decided she'd rather pursue cooking and attended the French Culinary Institute in New York City. She became a private chef and worked behind-the-scenes on several cooking shows before landing one of her own on the Food Network. As I said, full and noteworthy. Yet, search as I might, I couldn't find one lick of actual restaurant experience. If there had been any to speak of I'm sure Claire would have found something better to write about than "gaze-patterns" on menus, or what it costs to make a dish of pasta. I've seen plenty of things going on in a kitchen that would be much more surprising to the customer than that. You want examples? If the dude grilling your steak is really in the weeds, he may just drop that piece of meat in the deep fryer to speed things up a bit; hardly what a person expects when they pay $20-$30 for a filet mignon. I've been that dude. What's more, I probably had a beer in my hand and a few more in my belly while I was doing it. I'm not proud, just honest. Hell, I once opened the walk-in door to find a cook standing completely naked save for a well placed watermelon in his hands; his idea of humor (and that watermelon found its way onto about 50 appetizer plates later that day, yummy).
A seasoned chef hard at work:
"tee-hee! what do I do with all these eggs?!?"
I work in kitchens, and you don't see me writing an exposé on sneaky tricks that people in marketing or media use, mainly because I have only a remedial idea of how they do things. You like food? That's great. I like TV but it hardly makes me an expert on what happens behind the scenes. The moral of the story: go with what you know. Rather than re-post her article here I've decided to paraphrase it, just a little bit.
5 Things Restaurants will do to Screw you out of all your Hard-earned Dough:
1. While it may appear that the sole purpose of a restaurant is to cater to your every whim and desire after you've spent a long day working in the salt mines, they're actually businesses that have been cleverly designed to turn a profit. Am I blowing your mind yet? (Cooks and waiters usually work there asses off for the sake of a paper-thin profit margin. Rarely is there a dish that yields "BIG bucks", as Claire puts it in her statements. Yes, a pork chop only costs us a few dollars. Yes, we will charge you four or five times that for the finished dish, it's how we stay in business. Keep in mind that restaurant profit margins usually hover around 5%-10%. Far less than, say, the kind of money a television show can make.)
2. The beef in that beef stew you ordered from the special menu might have been an entirely different dish the night before, and the veggies in there would have gone bad if they hadn't been used right away. If this one surprises you then I've got another news flash: that sale rack at Nordstrom is actually just the "leftovers" of last season's clothes that nobody wanted. If your asking yourself "why don't they just throw that stuff away?" then refer back to paragraph 1. (Throwing food away is a sin. Finding delicious ways to use it before it goes bad is the mark of a good chef. If something's "about" to go bad, that means it's still good, and if you're the chef or owner who paid for it then you'll find a way to use it quick if you want to keep the doors open and the lights on.)
3. Cocktails are usually expensive. Restaurants will try to trick you into ordering them using three techniques: 1. They'll put them all together on a little menu. 2. They'll make them delicious, often using fresh fruits and herbs as tools in their clever scheme. 3. They put booze in them. The customer's only recourse is to drink something less expensive like water or soda. (Thank God Claire Robinson was there to reveal this one.)
4. Just because the pasta dish is the cheapest on the menu doesn't mean the restaurant makes the least amount of profit on it. The mark-up is a greater percentage on pasta dishes than on chicken dishes for example, even though we charge a little less for the pasta dish. This is because we're trying to trick you into getting the cheaper dish, padding our already enormous bank accounts with the extra change we might make. (Or, maybe food isn't the only cost associated with getting a plate to your table. Pasta might cost a lot less than chicken, but the cooks, dishwashers, hosts, and waiters that all work to bring it to you and the rent for the space you're eating it in cost the same no matter what you get.)
5. Menus are specifically designed to get you to buy what the restaurant wants you to buy. This malicious little trick is often referred to as "product placement". They put the things they really want to sell you in the first places you'll look. Often, they'll use bold text or fancy borders to draw the eye. Shocking, I know. Of course I'll bet nobody else realizes this, as restaurants are surely the only kind of business using this method of deception.