Criticizing people's judgement based on their perceived qualifications or experience is offensive and often wrong. Just because you did something doesn't mean you understand it better than someone who didn't do it. It can actually hamper understanding by narrowing your viewpoint or causing you to overvalue your knowledge. I see this all the time among poorly educated people - "I've driven trucks for 20 years, I know how dynamic instability works."
First, the article is from a consultancy. Not even one that specialises in restaurants, but one that specialises mostly in retail it seems from their website.
Now their arguments:
> Consider the following example from a restaurant in New York. The sweet spot contains two expensive seafood platters (plateaux de fruits de mer). With the added illustration and a touch of color, these items are designed to draw attention to themselves.
This part is correct. They obviously want to bring attention to their seafood choices.
> You can probably guess that these platters bring in higher profits than some of the other menu items.
This part is so far off it's not even funny. Seafood isn't cheap. Seafood platters don't have good food cost. There's no starches, no vegetables to balance the cost of the protein. The point of drawing you to these items is because seafood itself is a draw - it's the draw that brings you into the restaurant itself. And hopefully you get some bubbly, maybe some sides, or maybe you're just having oysters before your steak and red wine.
> Price It Right
You don't say...
Anyhow, restaurants are about hospitality. There's no funny psychology. Yes you want nice menus and yes you want nice descriptions. You want to bring in diners who order a bit of everything, with some alcohol. You cater to some tastes, offer new tastes, bring in novel items, at the end of the day you do want balanced ordering though, so as to have minimal spoilage. Your concept, decor and cuisine should differentiate, prices should reflect your market, but again, there's no funny business as far as menus go. Simpler is better, menus with less than 15 items are in vogue right now.
As for broadening my horizon - 10 years of high end cooking, 5 years serving and bartending, and I went to school for econ/business. I'm obviously here to learn about things like programming and technology, and I'd pretty good with both of those, having done CS courses and used various stats packages and languages throughout school. Restaurants do embrace modernity (POS systems keep track of sales mixes, and we'd examine them every single day, keep track of various trends, including past years, etc...), but what they don't embrace is leeches like consultants who prey on the mom and pop diner who aren't savvy enough to know the difference.
Also, the article was a pretty sad analysis of menu development and pricing. Might as well have been an ad in the corner of an industry magazine.
