Sound, design and psychology: How restaurants make visitors pay more
In our blog, we consider various aspects of the restaurant business - from the introduction of automation systems (like Jowi ) and the creation of menus , to work to reduce the noise level of the room and use Google to search for information about potential customers.
As in any business, restaurant owners expect to make a profit. Hence all the efforts described above to create the best conditions for customers. But the psychology of the visitors themselves also helps to earn more - restaurants actively use this. Today we will talk about several tricks by which institutions stimulate their guests to pay more.
Restriction of choice
In psychology, there is a theory known as the “ paradox of choice, ” according to which the more options a person has, the more uneasy he feels. In other words, people do not want to choose from a large number of options and spend a lot of time on it.
It is more profitable for a restaurant to give a guest a small list of dishes in each category - then the choice will be made faster and with more positive emotions. Menu designer Gregg Rapp in an interview said that the ideal number in this regard is seven.
When we include more than seven dishes in the menu, this is too much for the guest, the numbers crush and confuse him, and when a person is in doubt, he usually orders what he has already tried. On the one hand, there is nothing particularly bad in it, but a good menu should encourage a person to try something new (and more expensive).
Studies have shown that the ideal number of dishes in fast food restaurants is 6, and in more expensive establishments from seven to ten.
McDonald's initial menu was small, now there are more than a hundred items in it, and the company is facing a drop in sales
Extremely catchy descriptions
A study by Cornell University experts showed that restaurant visitors are more likely to order dishes that are colorfully described on the menu. Other researchers, already from the University of Illinois, found that vivid descriptions increased food sales in the institution by 27%.
Gregg Rapp, the same professional menu creator, in an interview on NBC “Today”gave an example of a restaurant serving crab cakes. The dish was described as “a delicate cake with a rich taste, made by hand from sweet crab meat, with the addition of mayonnaise and a secret mixture of seasonings, sprinkled with golden cracker crumbs.” Using such vivid descriptions allows the visitor to clearly imagine the pleasure he will get when ordering a dish . As a result, the guest is more likely to be satisfied at the end of dinner.
In addition, studies have shown that sales also increase the use of brand names familiar to visitors in the menu. That is why TGI Friday's uses Jack Daniel's sauce or Minute Maid juices.
Using expensive foods to draw attention to cheaper ones
Rapp says that restaurants create special traps on the menu - a very expensive dish attracts attention, as a result of which the price of cheaper ones seems justified.
Most likely the guest will not take lobster for a couple of hundred dollars, but after seeing such a dish on the menu, a few tens of dollars steak does not seem so expensive anymore.
In addition, there is another psychological point - within the framework of the amount that the visitor is ready to spend in the restaurant, more expensive dishes are more likely to be rated higher. In one of the studies, the guests of the same institution were offered identical desserts, but in the first case the price was $ 8, and in the second only $ 4. There were no differences in food, but the more expensive dessert was rated as more delicious.
Learning Viewing Patterns
Restaurants are exploring scenarios for visitors to view menus. Studies show that visitors are more likely to order the dish that they saw first. Then you just need to understand exactly where people look at once, how they open the menu.
For a long time, it was believed in the industry that people were looking in the upper right corner, and the whole process of studying the menu corresponds to the scenario in the picture below:
Therefore, in the upper right corner they usually have the most favorable drinks and dishes for the establishment.
However, recent eye-tracking studies by American experts have shown that in fact, visitors are more likely to read the menu as a book, from top to bottom.
Therefore, the most advanced restaurants in design issues now create their own menus, taking into account the fact that the "point of attraction", where users look, is not in the upper right corner, but on the left.
Music creates a "mood for spending"
Researchers from the University of Leicester in the UK found that classical music in the background of a restaurant encourages visitors to spend more because they have the impression of their own wealth. At the same time, the use of less sophisticated pop music led to a 10% reduction in the total bill.
Different serving sizes of the same dish
This technique is called " bracketing ." The restaurant visitor does not know how small the “small” portion of the dish is, so it seems to him that its price is justified (there is less food there). However, the restaurant actually wanted to “sell” this smaller portion, and in order to stimulate the purchase, a more expensive and larger portion was used.
Pictures help sell
Restaurant sales can be increased by simply adding food images to the menu (though it is not so easy to take high-quality pictures - we wrote about this process in one of the previous materials). According to Rapp, photos on the menu increase sales by 30%.
Researchers from the University of Iowa conducted an experiment in which teenagers were given a menu with and without salad photos in a restaurant at a children's camp. Those children who saw the image with a probability of 70% higher decided to order this dish.
“You react to the image the same way you would react to a plate of food in front of you,” says Associate Professor Brian Menneke. “If you are hungry, the reaction will be“ I will order myself as in the picture. ””
This effect is further enhanced by the use of electronic menus in which the dish can rotate or move. According to Menneke, the more realistic the picture, the higher the probability of the order.
At the same time, restaurants rarely place images for all dishes in the menu. This is because, a large number of pictures distract visitors, and the institution itself seems more “cheap”. Therefore, in very expensive restaurants, images may not exist at all.