Amor de Cosmos

I have heard of ‘referencing’ before, where a restaurant has a high priced item on the menu so people feel better about the lower priced item they invariably choose, but these techniques are new to me:

• Complex menus with lots of sub-sections will generally sell more of those items that come first or last in any section
• Simple menus with just one list of main courses tend to sell most of whatever is third on the list, so that will be the highest margin dish.
• The wine with the highest mark-up is usually the second cheapest on the list. This is because no one wants to order the cheapest wine, so customers usually go for the second-cheapest
• The “power position” is on the inside right, just above the centre
  

Incidently, ‘referencing’ isn’t just for menus. The best selling Mac is the MacBook, not MacBook pro; the bestselling iPod is the Nano, not the Touch.