How Restaurants Get You to Spend More

Eating at restaurants accounts for half of an average family's budget, according to MSN Money . And there are plenty of tricks that restaurants are using to get you to spend more each time you go out.

Pay attention to these techniques the next time you dine out and you might just slash a little off your bill.

Beware of Value Meals

WalletPop.com writes that prearranged "value meals" or prix-fixe meals don't always save you money. To help ease customers' decision-making processes, meals are bundled together, which often translates into people ordering and spending more than they really want. Oftentimes meals are cheaper if they are ordered a la carte.

Menu Architecture

Some restaurants hire "menu engineers" who work on placement of menu items so that restaurants maximize their profits. WalletPop writes that in the same way grocery stores stock their most expensive items in the center shelves where your eye is most likely to look, menus often list their most expensive items in the upper-right corner where the eye naturally looks.

Gregg Rapp, who has been a menu engineer for 27 years, said that restaurants want people to order items that are both more expensive and ones that they will enjoy. "The restaurant's goal is to not only get you to come in today, but to come back over and over and over," he said.

No $ Sign = More Spending

How the prices on the menu are displayed apparently also plays a factor on how much customers spend. The Wall Street Journal reports that a study conducted at Cornell University found that restaurants that drop the dollar sign from their menus get their patrons to spend an average of $5.55 more per meal.

"Especially inside today's environment, where they are looking everywhere to squeeze pennies, this is really low-hanging fruit," said lead study author Sybil Yang. She later added: "It doesn't p— off the chef. You're not playing around with ingredients. This is incredibly easy."

Sexy Menu Descriptions

Be careful of trendy buzzwords on menus as well. "Heirloom tomatoes" and "truffles" might sound divine, but they will take on extra dollars to your bill.

Flashy Marketing Strategies

MSN Money cites the upscale Aureole Las Vegas where "wine angels" retrieve bottles from a 42-foot-tall tower. "Anything that gets patrons' attention will get them to spend," restaurant designer Mark Stech-Novak said.

Fast food restaurants will sometimes create a high-energy ambience to maximize their profits. "It encourages faster turnover," said Stephani Robson, a senior lecturer at Cornell School of Hotel Administration. "Specifically, the use of bright light, bright colors, upbeat music and seating that does not encourage lolling."