Free breadsticks?(okay if you produce them in house or have a massive amount of locations), $15 worth of produce sold for $14? Hell no.
25% - that's the sales price you can put towards food costings, this should give you a rough idea of the unforseen costs.
If your kitchen isn't running at better than 25% food costings, your kitchen isn't profitable. Some places you can take a cut from this if you are working with another industry(such as gambling), but for a pure restaurant/cafe, don't even think about not hitting that point.
As an example: Look at the walk in fridge as a business that 'buys' food from grocers and 'sells' food to the chefs when they need it, 'losing' money when food is wasted. Similarly front of house 'buys' food from the kitchen.
You're argument would be akin to the keyboard buying from the user to write code.
I think I realise what you are leaning towards, and it is like that.
Any piece of equipment has a direct relation to the ROI, honestly it's not pleasant to think of staff that way, but when the margins are that tight, it has to be done. (that's one of the reasons I left hospitality.)
It's not like advertising where you can charge someone 20k for a dm campaign, people will only pay so much for food, and the 'whales' arnt really there (at least not enough to keep an entire restaurant running at a loss).
When you're profit margin is less than 25%, and you can't guarantee the number of users per day, let alone per week, then you're damn eight everything is calculated as a cost down to the cent.
If you cannot project within your margin of error the number of covers you would turn per day or per week then you do not have a restaurant business, you have a hobby.
In the restaurant business there's not really a good analogue on a regular menu, a loss leader isn't clearing out any stock because the items are constantly just degrading naturally so you'd be better off just pulling the item if it costs more to make and not constantly making it.
It'd be like if JiT manufacturing was a thing and stores made shirts for a loss in the store from raw materials, it just doesn't make sense unless that item has consistent accessories (your drinks and apps) that sell for much larger margins. It's a dangerous game because you're counting a lot on consistent consumer behavior.
> a loss leader isn't clearing out any stock
Restaurants also need to have a certain amount of variety on the menu to deal with the one picky eater in a party. That's why every seafood restaurant still has one token chicken dish, every steakhouse has a vegetarian dish, etc.
That is, the PRICE of one glass of wine is roughly equal to the COST of one bottle of the same wine. Restaurants, of course, source their wine through commercial distributors. They get price breaks in volume that consumers can't typically get.
As for picky eaters usually those will be one of a handful of cheap easy to make meals where the restaurant just aims to have something reasonably acceptable for those. There's no reason to make those dishes loss leaders.
Bargain hunters, I'm told, are bad customers for restaurants. The person coming in for a great deal on $20 chicken is also squeezing a bowl of lemons into a glass and asking for more sugar packets. That's what they tell me, anyway!
However, my overarching point would be that a restaurateur needs to understand operating costs in great detail. If a loss leader is going on the menu, you need to be engaged enough to know it's a loser, by what margin, and also the benefits of keeping it around. The article in the OP suggested no such CBA was really occurring.