How Many of These Restaurant Tricks to Spend More Money Have You Fallen For?

To splurge or not to splurge is often somewhere in our minds, and maybe you even start out with a budget, and by the end of the night, it's "oopsy."

I've so been there one too many times.

Restaurants are businesses that want to make a profit, and what they charge mostly depends on the cost of ingredients and the labor market. Location, as well as plays a huge role, and don't even get me started if a celebrity chef or hot restaurant of the moment is involved.

Anyway, no matter the restaurant, a variety of strategies are used to get you to hopefully drop a few extra bucks either knowingly or unknowingly.

According to the Interesting Facts website and the Push Notifications website, here's what restaurants do.

DECOY METHOD

This is a pretty simple strategy that works almost every time. Take spaghetti with marinara sauce. We know it's super inexpensive to make, but restaurants charge a premium. Simply placing the spaghetti next to other, much more expensive "decoy" dishes, we feel like we're getting a deal.

A couple of well-placed high-priced items on a menu convince us to spend more than if everything were around the same price. Most people never buy the most expensive item on a menu.

STRATEGIC PRICING

A common practice to get us to spend more is to price the item as "9" or "nine" instead of using the traditional dollar sign. According to the Interesting Facts website, research shows we spend up to 30% more.

MENU PSYCHOLOGY

Color and layout matter. When many menus are convoluted or ugly, we spend less time with them. A more precise, simple, and visually appetizing menu is easier to peruse; thus, we may order that appetizer we weren't planning on because we spend more time with it.

Our eyes are also drawn to colors that flatter the restaurant: blue for seafood, greens for sophistication or health, and reds and yellows for excitement. Even placing these colors in certain parts of the menu will draw our eyes to that section, where we may order something we normally wouldn't.

Even creative menus, like those on a chalkboard, grab us, and we often order more because everything "looks" so good on the menu.

BUZZWORDS

While we aren't fooled by reading "the best steak in the city" or "only the finest ingredients," buzzwords and phrasing do work.

For example, restaurants that tone it down while offering what feels like an elevated experience with "grass-fed," "fire-roasted," "stone-ground," "flaky crust," "secret family recipe," or "like mom or grandma used to make" create an experience.

AMBIENCE

Sometimes, we're just in it for the food, but when we find ourselves in a restaurant that makes us want to linger, we're going to do just that and buy that appetizer, have dinner, enjoy an extra drink or two, and maybe even go for that dessert. We may even find ourselves ordering another appetizer to share.

Lighting, music, clientele, and energy level are all part of the experience, and while restaurants like to turn over tables, they also like the table that lingers and keeps spending or moves things to the bar if there's one.