A new book,
"The Language of Food", analyzes restaurant menus across the US, and tries to find patterns between the words used on the menu and the price of dishes. As
The Independent reports, Dan Jurafsky, a professor of Linguistics at Stanford University in California, studied 6,500 restaurant menus, to try and unearth what words correspond with price increases and decreases. His research, quite thorough, gives restauranteurs and consumers a like a lot to think about. While some of the points are obvious, many are very subtle. Keep reading for the full breakdown.
Professor Jurafsky
"explains that every increase of one letter in the average length of words describing a dish is associated with an increase of $0.69 in the price of that dish". While that may not sound like a lot, think of how many words you can fit into a description on a menu! That's a big increase for relatively little effort on the part of the restaurant (though, of course, the food has to live up to expectations). In addition to pure letter count, specific words and types of words correlate with increases and decreases in price. Words such as "exotic" and "spices" were found to be more common on costlier dishes, while "linguistic fillers" such as "crispy" and "delicious" tend to be used more often on menus describing cheaper fare.
When it comes to descriptive words such as "crispy" or "chunky", Jurafsky explains that
"the cheaper restaurants are a little worried that you might not know. It's a kind of status anxiety". For each use of these "positive vague words", a dish costs $0.08 less on average. More expensive restaurants are also more likely to feature the origin of ingredients. So if a restaurant describes their salad as "crispy" and "flavorful", (which is of course, how a raw veggie salad should be), then chances are they are it will cost you less than at the restaurant that describes a salad made with "organic, locally grown lettuce".
Be sure to check out the source link below for more information.
Restauranteurs, do your menus follow these trends? And diners, have you noticed these patterns when dining out? Let us know about your experience via Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
Source: T
he Independent,
Image Credit (Flickr)
Tablebases.com
