Restaurants Start Charging More For Peak Dinner Times - Business ...

The restaurant industry is notoriously low-margin. The cost of doing business is the same whether the restaurant is empty or full.?

Now the industry is hitting back and looking at ways to charge more for dinner at peak times, Stephanie Clifford at the New York Times reports.

She writes:

"The restaurants? premise is that a dinner at an 8 p.m. on Saturday should simply cost more than one at 5:30 on a Monday. ?Restaurants are catching up,? said Sheryl E. Kimes, professor of operations management at Cornell?s school of hotel administration. "They are betting that consumers, used to paying extra for holiday-weekend flights, V.I.P. seats at the theater or umbrellas on the street after the first raindrop hits, will also pay more for their Friday-night dinners out."

Some restaurants are already experimenting with different prices based on time. Fancy Manhattan restaurant Le Cirque uses an app called Savored, which offers cheaper meals based on reservation time. Another app called Leloca allows restaurants to contact users with promotions if a big party fails.

The Times reports that research from Cornell suggests that consumers might be comfortable with the idea of paying more for peak dinner times:?

"People were O.K. with different prices by time of day and day of week, but what made that even more pronounced was the way you framed it,? (Professor Kimes at Cornell) said. ?If you said it?s 20 percent cheaper to come during the week than on the weekend, people thought that was more acceptable than if you said it?s 20 percent more expensive on the weekend.?

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Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/restaurants-start-charging-more-for-peak-dinner-times-2012-9

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