7 Ways Restaurant Menus Manipulate Diners

Burgers or barbecue? You may think you actually have a choice, but the fact is restaurant menus are designed to order for you. By carefully manipulating graphics and copy, restaurants are pointing diners towards the more profitable items on their menus.

Follow us as we walk through the seven steps restaurants use to psych you out.

1. Red Ink
Red stimulates the appetite and, when coupled with mouth-watering descriptions, makes you hungrier than when you walked in.

2. Placement
The eye naturally falls to the top-right section of a page, so many menu designers place their most profitable dishes here, often enclosed in a box.

3. Storytelling
Menus used to simply tell you the ingredients and preparation style of each dish. Now they weave an entire tale about each item; perhaps explaining how the chef came up with the dish or whose granny provided the recipe.

4. Disappearing Dollar Sign
It's not unusual to see prices listed as "15" instead of "$15." That's because eliminating the dollar sign avoids reminding diners they're actually spending money.

5. Short Lists
More menus now place just five or six items in a category, providing you with fewer selections but making it easier to choose. Limiting the number of dishes also keeps the menu from looking too cluttered.

6. Name Dropping
Some people and brand names improve customer's perception of a dish. This might include anyone from Aunt Edna to Ghirardelli.

7. Create A Decoy
Adding a high-dollar item to each category makes everything else look more reasonable. If a USDA Prime steak is priced at $30 and beef tips at $10, frugal customers will be more attracted to the tips.

Photo by camknows