Here are the sneaky tactics restaurants use to scam customers: ‘It’s incredibly effective’

Gotcha.

Nothing is worse than the feeling of going out to a restaurant and feeling like you were ripped off.

Not to be the bearer of bad news, but it turns out that many restaurants have certain sneaky tactics of how they, in a way, scam customers.

If you’re usually a decisive person but notice once you open a restaurant menu and can’t for the life of you decide what to order, there’s a psychological reason for that.

“Most people decide what to order in under 90 seconds,” Fred Harrington, CEO of Proxy Coupons, said, according to Yahoo! Life.

“Restaurants know this — and they’ve designed their menus to capitalize on that snap decision-making.”

‘No price, no problem’ is what some diners might think when they don’t see any dollar signs on a menu — and knowing that, restaurants, especially upscale ones, ditch prices on purpose.

If they do list the price, it’s usually in an unexpected spot on the menu.

“The goal of restaurants is to put the food first and the price second in the customer’s mind,” USC lecturer Dr. Jason Buhle told Delish. “One way they can do this is by literally listing the food first and the price second.”

Another sneaky hack to get customers to rack up a hefty bill is by setting an extremely high price point for one item so that everything else in comparison seems cheaper.

“It’s called anchoring, and it’s incredibly effective,” Harrington said.

Have you ever read a menu and thought to yourself, ‘Wow, that sounds delicious?’ There’s a reason for that, too.

“The more descriptive the name, the more value people assign to it,” said Harrington. “It’s not about what’s on the plate — it’s about how it sounds.”

Aside from a decadent-sounding dish, restaurants also try to play on nostalgia with their descriptions of dishes.

“A carefully worded description can load almost any dish with an emotional resonance that is hard to resist,” as explained by global restaurant consultant company Aaron Allen & Associates.

“Diners beware – that tempting slice of ‘Grandma’s Apple Pie’ you’re about to order has probably been languishing in an industrial freezer for months.”

Another cunning thing to be on the lookout for is a stuffed tip jar placed by a cash register.

Content creator Basia, known as @everupmarketing on TikTok, posted a video explaining that restaurant employees will often put money into a tip jar to pressure customers to add to it.

She also explained that when servers ask if you want tap or sparkling — they do so hoping you’ll order the costly option.

An unexpected one is the type of music restaurants pipe into their speakers. “They play slower music when it’s quiet – and faster music when it’s packed…because slow tempo makes you stay longer. Fast tempo makes you eat and leave,” Basia said.