There was some research a while back which found a
possibly-surprising result. As most people probably suspect, the
difference in perceived quality between wines does not really follow
price very closely. But! It does follow stated price;
if you serve the same wine to a lot of people, and tell some of them
it’s $12 for a box and others it’s $400 for a bottle, the latter like it
better. Better yet, they’re right — they really do enjoy it more. Thank you, MRI scans and the like.
Well.
This leads to a concept: A restaurant called Placebo. What do they
sell? A 50% discount. Which is to say: The entire menu is framed
with everything at about twice the price you’d otherwise expect to pay
for it, but then your check gets a 50% discount. So say you have a
steak roughly of the same quality as the $13 steaks at the Outback
Steakhouse. The menu says $26, your bill when it arrives has a 50%
discount. But everything you order feels expensive.
For extra credit, you could do interviews and arrange waiters to
adopt personalities which suit the customers. Someone comes in who
likes Good Wholesome Cooking? We can set you up with a waiter who
thinks fancy food is ridiculous. Or, we can set you up with a waiter
who is a total food snob, and you can have a wonderful meal knowing that
the waiter is missing out on Good Wholesome Cooking. Your call
.
The basic idea here is… people aren’t going out to eat for the food,
they’re going out for the experience. Why not sell the experience
as-such as the product?
