this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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I'm not an economist, but whlouldnt manipulated prices drive things more toward fair market value? A crusty menu meant to last a year is more likely to overshoot prices to cover market fluctuations that occur during that year. At least this is how I think of it.
Restaurants have notoriously low profit margins. Not every restaurant of course, but there's a reason that restaurants regularly fail, especially in cities, and I don't think it's because the owners are spending it all on yachts.
I think a lot of them are in debt up to their eyeballs and that's why they fail. They also usually make up for the lower margins on food with better margins on drinks, but there's a margin on every item regardless.
Rent is also a factor. Commercial real estate is not cheap.
And some just plain suck. The food sucks, the prices suck, the service sucks, or the location sucks.
There are myriad reasons why restaurants fail, and I doubt it's all because of low margins.
This makes me wonder whether there's ever price discrimination going on. A system like this could give different prices based on what kind of phone you're using if they wanted it to, and you wouldn't necessarily know it.
Wh... why would they do that?
I guess maybe if a phone company is secretly paying them to, but why would a phone company go to restaurants to give their customers lower prices? And even if they did, what do they gain from that if they don't want anyone to know?
And even if they did, the waiter would also have to take note of what kind of phone the customers use, and give them the respective price on the bill. One slip-up could reveal the scheme.
The idea behind price discrimination is that some customers will still buy the same product if it is offered at a higher price, while others will not. By figuring out which is which and offering them different prices, you can make more profit. For instance Uber is known to charge higher rates to customers with low phone battery, because they are probably more desperate and would be more willing to pay.
If a restaurant knows you have an expensive phone, they know you can probably afford more expensive meals and won't walk out if the prices are high. If you have a cheap phone, they might want to tone it down a little to avoid driving you away. They might be able to make more money by doing this.
Also you wouldn't need the waiter involved you can just check the user agent if all ordering has to be done through phones, the whole process would be automatic.
If you've got a more expensive phone they'll charge more because they assume you have more money.
Alternatively, if you've got a cheaper phone they'll charge more so that they don't have to cater to the "wrong type of people."
I saw an article on lemmy about this yesterday, though not sure whether I'll find it again.
Hotels, flights, retailers already have an abundance of price discrimination. Target shows higher prices when your device is physically closer to a store and lower prices when you are further away. IPhone users tend to pay higher prices because they assume that since you had the extra money to pay for an expensive phone, you'll be open to spending more at other stores.
Likewise, if they see your device or other devices on your network/near you making several searches for hotels/flights the price will increase.
It's just another way to build greed into the system
That Target one sounds definitely illegal.
Just use a browser that hides useragent
While a valid point, it misses the possibility of people who may not know what useragent even means; it misses people who may not know that a website can identify what browser or device you are using.
This would be noticed and called out the literal second two people go together and have different devices. We don't all just travel in packs according to our mobile device brand or OS lol
If they notice the difference. They might be too busy socializing and not caring about the pricing that much.
That's really reaching hard to try and make this valid. We have real examples of businesses taking advantage there's plenty to worry about without making up more
Just spoke from real life experience. /shrug
How would this work though? You're not ordering your food via the QR code link, you're telling the waitstaff. Unless they ask you what price your saw, how are they going to correlate their variable price to a particular customer?
However, this would make it a lot easier to implement "peak pricing". Their menu could automatically update based on time of day, or day of week, and certainly holidays.
In some places, the QR link redirects you to a page where you can order items without interacting with the staff.
I think that's a huge reason places have kept the QR codes. It's not entirely their fault. Their costs have unstable and constantly increasing lately. Reprinting new menus with pricing adjustments on a regular basis isn't free in a industry that's already slim margins.
Related pet peeve: restaurants that have a million items for a million prices, all of them basically the same. Example: sandwich shop not far from me. Every sandwich is +|- a dollar, same with every item. Takes forever for them to ring it up and the variance is pennies. Just charge $X per sandwich and maybe markup a few premium items (roast beef, avocado, bacon whatever).
When in doubt: simplify
Presumably you can place your order via the qr code to so less risk of human error transcribing it wrong or God forbid you get one of those annoying waiters that think they have a super memory and can hold more than 8 items in short term memory and don't even write things down.
QR code menus and ordering systems are terrible IMO.
The tech often sucks, but more than that they make the entire restaurant experience worse.
I tried to keep an open mind when encountering them at first, but they often nullify any and all interactions you have with the waiters, and turn the restaurant from full service into something like a fast casual restaurant...yet they still prompt you for tips at the end of the meal and add additional percentage overcharge fees for "inflation" or whatever.
I don't want a waiter to be over at my table every twenty seconds, but waiters shouldn't be made pointless by a maître d', a runner, and a busboy.
They're anti-social shit dreamt up by the same kind of minds that gave us the horror that is self-checkout.
Eh, you sound like a bit of an extravert. I understand where you are coming from. I disagree and would rather have a good interface backed by an available and knowledgeable human only if trouble shooting or questions arise. I also love self check out😉. To each their own. Either of our preferred modalities can of course be implemented crappilly.
I'm just a person who likes to sit at a table and order like a person that paid to eat at a full service restaurant.
Neither you nor I should expect there to be "troubleshooting" in a full service restaurant. We're not setting up a new iPad; we're paying to be served.
Self-checkout is rife with not only anti-social vibes, but also involves possible legal trouble...and all so that the store didn't have to hire a few extra checkout personnel.
Both of these "innovations" are largely for the benefit of the owners and largely at the cost of the people patronizing these establishments.
I don't have a choice of stores, but I'm spoiled for choice in restaurants living in the city. I'll vote with my feet.
I think I understand your viewpoint, but personally have a different opinion. I'm not going to a restaurant to socialize with the waiter; although some of those interactions can be pleasant it's still just a functional transaction to me that can go wrong and could be be optimized. My main focus is the people I'm going to the restaurant with and the food/drinks.
QR for the win for me, but I agree fully that most of those apps kinda suck. I hope time will fix that.
I absolutely love self checkouts in shops, makes it more fast-in-fast-out kinda thing. But the very rare moments I have nowadays to go to a restaurant with my wife, I absolutely want to have a proper service and enjoy the evening as whole.
I can order McDonald's with home delivery, don't want that shit in a restaurant