How Restaurants Use Human Psychology to Make You Eat More

Every business is mean in some way or the other. Entrepreneurs use various tactics and strategies in order to gain more business and when it comes to restaurant domain, the game becomes much more interesting. Here are some mind blowing tricks that make you eat more or order expensive options:

1. Use of impressive language:
The kind of description used in the menu attracts the diners. They are made in such a way that diners wonder, what the dish is about. It can also invoke responses like “oh, such a grand dish it would be, lets order!” The trick is to give attractive titles along with minute details of the ingredients. Use of phrases like freshly ovened, fried to perfection, handcrafted are examples.

2. Use of photographs:
Some restaurants use tempting pictures in their menu or even on the walls, which gives rise to appetite and ultimately leads to increase in sales.

3. Design of menu:
There are various aspects for the menu design. First thing is the identification of areas which catches the attention of diners. The eye first goes to the upper right corner of the menu and that is where the most lucrative items are placed. If the restaurant wants to highlight some special item, they will create a negative space around it. Even small things like not using rupee symbol and rounding off prices to dividends of 5 also truck the mind into ordering more.

image source: http://firsthour.net/screenshots/kudos-2/kudos-2-chinese-restaurant-menu.jpg

4. They will make you buy what they want:
There are certain ways by which your decision making capabilities are affected. One of the popular methods is offering small difference between medium and large sizes so that people buy large size by paying little extra amount. Another method is to place the expensive dish at upper right corner (where eye goes first) so that all other dishes appears to be cheaper in comparison.

image source: http://365psd.com/images/previews/6ac/gold-coin-vector-with-indian-rupee-symbol-30946.jpg

5. Use of colours:
Colours are very cleverly used in interior designing, especially in restaurant business. Choice of wrong colour can spoil the whole business. For your knowledge, here is a small summary of how colours are used:
Yellow colour is supposed to be on irritating side, so it makes people leave soon. That is why a touch of yellow is given in fast food joints.
Red colour: Dark red colour and stimulates hunger which is why table clothes are mostly of this colour.
Green: It is considered as a relaxing colour which is comforting for most of the diners and so, shades of green are used in fine dining restaurants or where the business owner wants you to sit for long time.

image source: http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/tutorials/03-restaurant-1.jpg

A good example is McDonalds who use various techniques like appropriate colours (yellow and red, so that people feel hungry and leave on time), use of food fragrances to increase appetite and luring kids with concepts like free toys with happy meals and creation of their own language of food (McNuggets, McFlurry etc.) helps them keeping the customers connected and coming back for more