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Comment by spiffytech | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't need to be fraud. A common trick in designing restaurant menus is to make it harder to scan the price list, because people buy the food they prefer when price is one of many considerations rather than prominently highlighted.

> Centred Justification

> When prices are printed in neat, right-justified columns, everyone glances down the line to compare prices. Menu consultants recommend a centred justification that leaves the prices scattered. This gently encourages the diner to order what she wants, not pick the cheapest price. Another way of minimising attention to cost? Omit the pound signs.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-hidden-psychology-of-men...

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What's weird, at least in the US, is that the higher-end the joint, the easier it is to shop by price, generally. Tax-inclusive, whole-dollar-value (no "$7.99" crap, it's just "8"), all-prices-aligned menus are more common as one heads up-scale.

Makes sense: at the high end of the market, patrons need to be able to identify and get the most expensive option to impress their date/mates, and understandably restaurants want to be helpful.

(See "Veblen goods".)

Never seen the impressing part... usually if you want to eat cheap, you go somewhere cheap, if you want something more expensive, you're prepared to pay more, but you don't want to be surprised after.

So, noone who goes to a place like this cares if one soup is $12 and the other $14 and then pick the cheaper one... but if you have a $79 bottle of wine on the menu and a $7900 bottle of wine on the menu, it's in the interest of the restaurant to have the patrons know clearly that the expensive bottle is really really expensive, and having deceptive pricing there ("$7.9 per 0.7ml") only causes problems when the check arrives.

"Sir, the wine is clearly marked as 0.0000000472c per cubic mile. How did you not see this coming?"

That happened to me in Italy. I knew I was in trouble when the chef came out to shake my hand. I did not realize the steak was priced per ounce, was the biggest steak I’d even seen, ended up costing me ~$400.

> I knew I was in trouble when the chef came out to shake my hand.

That is hilariously brutal. Oh no!

This is also how shitty clubs scam tourists in many areas... There are bouncers infront of the clubs, "come on, come on, free welcome drink", tourists (mostly western european middle aged men) go inside, a "random, totally not hired by the club" hot girl or two join them, seemingly interested where they are from, flirt a bit, order a glass of wine, then leave.. and the tourists are left with 500eur+ bill for the wine.

Although, bouncers have to distinguish eg. solo german men from eg. balkan construction workers, because the scam is somewhat less effective on those.

This is like listening to americans when they try anything to avoid using metric units, but the imperial ones suck with representation... So.. how many cubic lawnmowers is this?

example:

https://twitter.com/KSHB41/status/1158871610876682240?lang=p...

For the high end restaurant clientele, the difference between 10 vs 20 or 10 vs 9 is not much (which is what 19.99 and 9.99 tricks are exploiting), and they are optimizing for time and optimal experience, because they have 'less' of that compared to their money. Also seeing the tricks like that is indicative of being lower class, because $10 or $1 prices differences matter at that level.

Kinda, but it seems pretty common anywhere remotely "hip", not just fancy $150/head restaurants. It seems to be almost a cultural/class thing rather than being restricted to super-expensive places. You can find $9 (exactly) burgers commonly-enough, and by the time you're up to $35/head being a common bill (without drinks) it's practically the norm. I'll grant the higher end of that range may read as impressive and the kind of thing some demographic might spend for the sake of spending that much money, but I don't think the lower end does. (exact range may vary, but that's what it's like in my city)

I don't think it's exactly about letting people order Veblen Goods, but I do agree that it is about signaling class.

The .99 pricing thing is associated with "trying to make it look cheaper", so a restaurant that puts round prices is trying to send the opposite message: we're not cheap, you're not cheap, we won't try to fool you.

Maybe there are some 3 Michelin star restaurants where this is the case (~150 in the world), but otherwise these are not Veblen goods.

Also there seems to be a more normal distribution of last digit prices as well e.g. main courses are $x2, $x1, $x6, $x8, $x5, $x4,etc.

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