GLC
Head Chef
I agree. Restaurants need to maximize the dollars they take in for a table to survive. If a table turns over 2-3 times in a night, that's your revenue for the night. If the portions are larger, they can charge more and increase revenues for that table. If you want to split a meal, you're cutting into their profits and that's why they want to charge for a plate.
I agree it stinks. Just trying to explain why it happens.
That's the truth that's behind all this. If what you sell is food, and you want to increase revenue, the most difficult approach is to try to gain more customers. Unless you have particular name recognition or location problems, you're probably not going to get many more customers. Most established restaurants, the long-term survivors, have pretty much as many customers as they can get. And some couldn't serve more if they had them.
The surest way is to simply sell more stuff, in this case, food. The cost for upsizing a meal is proportionally much smaller than the base cost. The second batty or the second pork chop or the 50% larger steak doesn't cost you much more, but they justify a higher price.
At first glance, it seems like you would be hurting yourself, competition wise. But once you are touting Biggies and supersizes and huge shrimp combos, your message is that THIS is the kind of meal you should be eating. And it's only a little bit more. Not ever more, shortly, because everyone else follows suit, because it makes sense. In seeing your huge shrimp combo and maybe raising you a bit, they're also turning more money.
It's not like all the meal sellers get together and conspire to serve giant meals. It just happens. And it largely happens because - ask yourself - what's a "meal?" Well, it's the amount of stuff you sit down to. If they are all telling you that food amounts two, three and four times larger are "meals," the message is that you can sit down to them and be sitting down to a meal. I mean, you would be unlikely to order three or four of them for yourself, even if the second, third, and fourth were just that small amount more than the base meal.
Compare
4 ounce Hamburger - $2. Large 6 ounce Hamburger - $2.50. MegaMeal 12 ounce Hamburger - $3.00.
Now 4 ounce Hamburger - $2. Two 4 ounce Hamburgers - $3. Three 4 ounce Hamburgers - $3.50.
I'm betting few individual diners would order three 4 ounce burgers. That would be piggy, because that's three meals you're eating. But they will buy the MegaMeal, because it's one "meal."
That's the way to shape choices. Make it okay by calling it a meal or, in the case of a restaurant, cramming it all on one plate. It is not simply offering more food. That was always offered. You could always by a supersize amount of food. You had the choice of more food.
It's no different with Coke. You could always have bought two 8-ounce bottles and chugged them down. And it's true today that you could choose to buy a 20-ounce bottle and pour half of it out. But you would not have bought two 8-ounce Cokes, because you just wanted a Coke, and Coke said, "Here's a Coke." You still want a Coke, and Coke still says, "Here's a Coke." You had better believe Wendy's would love to start the menu at a huge burger and say , "Here's a meal." But they couldn't stand the heat. But take a look at what the bottom tier hamburger looks like. They're only there to compare to.
Wendy's pitiful Cheesy Cheeseburger:
Really think that's a meal. No lettuce. No tomato. Not even condiments showing. They're there, but we don't want you seeing them and thinking this is a righteous meal. Meat and cheese grudgingly laid between buns. 300 calories. Add a medium Coke (+240) and the little "value" fries (+230), total 870 calories. And that's just for the burger carefully pictured to look pathetically NOT a meal.
Yes, you can choose to leave half the meal or pour out half the Coke. But by the time you're through childhood, the MegaMeal and the 20-ounce Coke are the accepted portions. If you don't think fast food corporations and restaurant chains think in terms of generations, look at what they pay for the properties they build on and think about how many hamburgers that is. They're positioned for your grandchildren.
It is not a harmless manipulation of choice, Nor is it something that you can write off as adults making choices. And it's not about protecting the individual from himself. Nor can you say, "Look. I make the right choice, and everyone else should, too." You can't get a grip on this until you think about it enough to see it as a slow bomb going off. I can't say what will work to abate this. But I do know that if the best way doesn't work, the second best has to be tried.