There was an uproar when it was discovered that Olive Garden doesn’t salt the water in which it serves its pasta. That’s just the beginning of what the restaurant industry does to try to cut costs wrote Olga Oksman:

• Serving steak with heavier cutlery will lead customers to think that the steak they’re eating is higher grade than it really is.
• If food prices jump then restaurants may decrease the size of dinner plates, thus serving smaller portions for the same price.
• Playing around with the amount of foam in glasses of beer can save up to 20 beers per keg.
• Overpricing common wines will outrage customers. Which is why restaurants purchase wines not commonly available then overprice those.
• The Patagonian toothfish sounds like an unappealing dish. Call it Chilean Sea Bass instead and voila you have a fancy sounding meal.
• Patrons first glance at the middle of a single page menu. Therefore restaurants will place their highest margin items in that area.
• One restaurant asked its employees to park in front of the restaurant to make it seem busier than it actually was. When it actually filled up workers moved their cars to the back.

Read other tricks of the trade, find out why you always get a new beer glass rather than a refill of your old one, and why opening a restaurant still isn’t all that lucrative even after all of this over here.

Source: The Guardian