Published: CT magazine, July 2004
If there is one thing the reality TV show My Restaurant Rules (MRR) will be remembered for, it is in exposing the phenomenon of upselling. In one edition, waiters pushed so much mineral water on patrons it called into question the premise of water a basic human right. Many of us have can relate to the experience. At a restaurant in Athens, we weren’t offered mineral water – it was poured and re-filled throughout the night, almost as though the food took second place. A major dustup ensued as a thirty euro bill for water was presented to the table.
MRR and books like Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential have not only lifted the lid on upselling, but a variety of other techniques employed in the restaurant environment. Just as a cinema outing involves subterranean product placement and split-second advertisements, the restaurant space can be seen as embodying a number of subliminal techniques designed to enhance enjoyment and widen profit margins.
Pushing mineral water is only one example of a wider world of upselling. The strategies are varied and their use depends on the sophistication of the establishment. At a popular fast-food outlet I purchased a soft drink and was asked whether I’d like some fried chicken as well. You can forgive the clumsiness of this approach in such an establishment.
As you move up the restaurant chain, however, upselling needs to be more refined. Jan Gundlach of Flavours Cooking school in Fyshwick calls this good service rather than upselling. “It is expected and desired. Upselling can be anticipating a guest’s needs. Let’s take coffee or tea. You should assume most people would like this, and you should ask. This is accepted and isn’t considered upselling,” he said.
There are, however, more aggressive forms of upselling which push the boundaries of acceptability. US hospitality industry websites, for example, advise waiters to avoid allowing customers an opportunity to say no. For example, instead of gauging interest in dessert, a waiter might just say “here is our lovely dessert menu, I’ll be back shortly to see how you’ve gone”, followed by “What have you chosen to order?”.
In Melbourne last year, my partner and I experienced this method of framing a customer’s selection. Brimming with confidence the savvy young staff built the scene – “have we dined here before?”, “Are we (as though he was part of the selection process) prepared for a great dining experience”. He continued “tonight we have two very special options – a degustation menu of game and some seafood at around $120, or another at $150 per person”. We (or was it he?) chose the former, only to discover much later that less expensive a la carte options had been available that evening. Our possible choices, however, had only been framed in terms of the two most expensive options.
If that wasn’t enough, we were the subject of a second major upsell later that evening. As friends arrived later for a coffee, our confident waiter assured us they would “take care of things”. Without further consultation, our friends were presented with a couple of fine desserts, a small cheese plate and coffee. The naive hope that this might have represented a costless gesture was shattered as bill was pushed a further $50 into the red.
Of course, this kind of upselling is at the extreme end of the scale. Many fine restaurants rely to a greater degree on subtle ways of encouraging us to enjoy our experience to the maximum. One is menu design – their colour, length, cleaniness, crispness, food descriptions, and even the font can all impact on our impressions and ultimately profit. “The menu is very important, as it represents the first contact between the kitchen and the customer,” said Gundlach.
According to US industry research, redesigning a menu can improve sales by an average of two to ten percent. Designers are aware, for example, that by placing higher-margin items in this position and slightly lowering the font of cheaper items, restaurateurs can increase profits. A similar impact can be had on wine lists. “Customers are not inclined to purchase the first wine on the list because they are too cheap. They may not buy the second because they believe the restaurant is trying to get rid of something. They may well then purchase the third on the list,” said Gundlach.
Food descriptions are just as important as their placement. In recent years, there has been a tendency in Australia to fill menus with intricate detail. That detail takes several forms – there are terms that appeal to a desire for the real and fresh (line-caught seafood, grain-fed beef etc), the local experience (Coffin Bay, Kangaroo island), higher concerns such as animal rights (eg free-range and organic chickens), nostalgia (references to nana’s home-baked crumble pie), and the exotic (French or Spanish terms). There are also terms that evoke a reaction purely because they are considered in or out of fashion. Some terms can make a menu sound badly dated – a sundried tomato, for example, evoke images of the eighties and foccacia. Sticky date pudding is as overdone as an ABBA song. Wagyu beef, however, is the word on everyone’s lips in recent years. Better restaurants don’t offer vanilla ice cream now – only vanilla bean ice cream.
According to James Mussillon, Chef-Owner of Aubergine and Courgette, regular diners pay close attention to menu terms. “It is very popular now to understand the terms like emulsion, veloute or jus, and understand what you are eating. It is the language of contemporary society,” he said.
Another method of keeping menus mentally stimulating is to employ liberal interpretations of food terms. A contemporary menu, for example, might include a carpaccio of beetroot, a lasagne of chocolate, or a confit of tomato. The use of the latter term has seemingly reached epic proportions – Jan Gundlach describing it as a “confit disease” sweeping restaurants. According to Gundlach, however, if it is done well we should only accept and enjoy it. “Over the past century, we have enlarged the repertoire of dishes. If a chef is able to create a lasagne of chocolate and elevate what he does to a great level then we should enjoy it.”
Social research supports the importance of these subtleties in menu design. A team of researchers at the University of Illinois conducted a six-week experiment involving 140 customers and found that descriptive menu labels increased sales by 27 per cent and improved attitudes towards the food, the restaurant and intentions to return. The researchers found that descriptive labels would not be effective if the food was of average quality – an unwarranted label could backfire and negatively influence customer attitudes.
Once the menu selection is made, aspects of the timing and spacing of courses can also shape returns to the restaurant. Again, this very much is a function of the style of restaurant and its target market. In the case of the cheap Asian eatery, there is an expectation of being seated quickly and keeping the experience moving. At the top-end, restaurants like Tetsuya’s or Claude’s in Sydney might assume one sitting per table in an evening. Where these two ends of the scale, converge, however is a more interesting case. These restaurants might not command the margins or wow-factor to survive on one or even two sittings, but must also be careful to ensure patrons feel relaxed and not rushed.
Some US restaurants are so concerned to maintain turnover that they employ electronic flagging systems. As each order is taken, it enters a central computer and when a fixed period of time passes an electronic warning is generated to indicate that service is required. Furthermore, menus are delivered as people are shown to their tables and drink orders upon seating. These techniques all help to prevent time wastage.
This might be appropriate in a culture that places greater emphasis on a guaranteed level of service and a functional attitude to eating in business. In Australia, however, the sense of being on a culinary conveyor belt has negative connotations and could destroy business. “I had an experience in LA once where I was surrounded by an army of service personnel that weren’t really talking to the guests. They were all over you, but not needed. I just wanted to have an enjoyable meal. Americans seem to love it, but I can’t understand it” said Gundlach.
Neuroscientists will tell you there is no direct link from the visual processing areas of the brain to those areas controlling appetite. Once food is at the table, however, few of us would disagree that its appearance can be just as important to perceptions of food quality and taste. And the aesthetic value of a dish can be strongly influenced by factors such as ratio of food to dish, colour variation, and the use of garnish. Some presentational tricks include avoiding inedible decorations, ensuring edible garnish is compatible with the underlying food, and even the use of odd numbers of pieces on plates, which can be more pleasing to the eye than even ones.
Food styles carry various connotations and are just as subject to the dictates of fashion as art or photography. The stack (vertical food presentation) was huge in the eighties and part of the nineties – but is now seriously out-dated judging by a Sydney-based account of a Canberra restaurant in which the reviewer noted the style “went out with the last labour Government.” Now food stylists rely much less on this embodiment of modernism.
At the highest levels of culinary achievement such as Tetsuya’s in Sydney, the food and presentation come together in a culinary and aesthetic conception that transcends their function to provide nutrients and sustenance. His confit of Tasmanian ocean trout, for example, deserves a place among design classics in the way it curves elegantly across the fine white plate like the Brindabellas sweep the Canberra landscape. It is the most photographed dish of any restaurant in the country. People come to view this as much as consume it.
So you’ve enjoyed looking and eating, and the bill finally arrives. It still isn’t time to get too relaxed, as savvy waiters also employ techniques to help maximise their returns. In Dinner Rush, Bob Giraldi’s 2000 film about a New York Italian restaurant, an embittered Art critic questioned why his waitress chose to introduce herself by name. Research published in the The Journal of Applied Social Psychology shows exactly why. Based on forty-two two-person dining parties, the work found that server introduction resulted in a significantly higher tipping rate (23.4 per cent) compared with no introduction (15 per cent).
Dr Michael Lynn, Associate Professor of Consumer Behaviour and Marketing at Cornell University of Technology, is an international expert in tipping and has studied these and other ploys used by waiters. These included squatting next to the table when taking orders (20-25 per cent increase in tips), smiling (140 per cent increase), repeating an order to the customer (100 per cent), touching the customer (42 per cent), and even forecasting good weather (18 per cent). So the next time you out, try to look beyond the obvious elements that affect your experience and you might discover elements of this subterranean world. One word of warning – too much analysis might save you a few dollars, but it too can detract from your dining experience.