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Video reveals the 'sneaky' ways fast food restaurants trick you into spending more money

It all starts with the menu.

via Yum9me/Flickr

What does a Big Mac combo cost these days?

Even though inflation levels have slowed in the U.S. over the past few months, fast food is one industry where prices keep going up. It seems like there’s nowhere to turn when the places where we used to go to for a deal keep getting pricier and pricier.

According to CBS News, prices at “limited service” restaurants were up 6.2% last year, with America’s most popular fast-food joint, McDonald's, up 10%.

"Our average pricing level in the U.S. business for the full year will be just over 10%," Ian Borden, the company's CFO, stated in an October 2023 earnings call.

If you're still hoping to find a deal on fast food, Business Insider created a video that shows all the “sneaky” tricks fast-food chains use to get you to spend more than you intended.

Sneaky Ways Fast Food Restaurants Get You To Spend Money

One way they get you to spend more money is by having menus that are a "noisy mess of options and categories” that only highlight a portion of what's available. Looking for the value menu? That will be pushed to the corner of the menu so your focus stays on the pricier items on its left side.

You'll also notice that the photos of the items are large, but the price next to them is comparatively small.

"Food pictures, they light up the brain. Particularly when you're hungry. Large food pictures, for a food company, are key," Hans Taparia, a professor of business and society at NYU, told Business Insider.

The video also reveals that if you do the math, value meals really aren't a significant savings.

"If you buy multiple items on the value menu, it won't necessarily be cheaper than a Happy Meal," Taparia adds. In the example provided in the video, a McDonald’s Double-Quarter Pounder value meal is only 9 cents cheaper than if you purchased the items separately.

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inflation

Joy

The restaurant in Japan where getting your order wrong is totally expected and accepted

It's a beautiful example of social inclusion for people with dementia.

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

At The Restaurant for Mistaken Orders, orders come as placed only 67% of the time.

Imagine you order salmon and green beans at a restaurant and the server brings you steak and potatoes. You'd say something, right? Tell them they got your order wrong? Expect them to fix the mix-up?

Not if you were dining at The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders in Tokyo, Japan, where part of the dining experience is not knowing whether you're going to get what you order. You have about a 1 in 3 chance that you won't, but those odds are in place for the best reason.

The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders employes people with dementia as servers, fully knowing that sometimes they're going to get customers' orders wrong. Customers who eat there know this fact as well. It's all just part of the adventure of dining at a restaurant designed to increase kindness and reduce isolation for people with cognitive impairments.

The pop-up restaurant is a collaboration between creator Shiro Oguni and a group home for people with dementia.

“Like everybody else, my awareness of dementia at first tended towards negative images of people who were ‘radically forgetful’ and ‘aimlessly wandering about,'" Oguni shared with Japan's government website. "But actually, they can cook, clean, do laundry, go shopping and do other ‘normal’ things for themselves."

Oguni was worried at first that people might criticize the concept of the restaurant, as if people with dementia were being treated as a carnival show or being made a laughingstock. But he says that when people see the smiles on the faces of the servers and how much joy and confidence they gain from having a purpose and being viewed as still capable, they are moved.

“The restaurant is not about whether orders are executed incorrectly or not,” noted Oguni. “The important thing is the interaction with people who have dementia.” It's a win-win. The people with dementia aren't as isolated, and 99% of the people who visit The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders leaves feeling happy.

See on Instagram

"Dementia is not what a person is, but just part of who they are," said Oguni. "People are people. The change will not come from them, it must come from society. By cultivating tolerance, almost anything can be solved."

People love the idea of creating a space where people with dementia can work have other people to interact with.

"Kindness, inclusion, and compassion are the hallmarks of making someone feel like a human being despite adversity in their circumstances," shared one commenter on Instagram. "These people are sweet human beings who deserve not to be given up on by society."

"Instead of sticking them in a home and avoiding them, they are including them and giving them the ability to live, a sense of purpose, a reason to smile. I think it's a beautiful concept," wrote another.

"The beauty of a community choosing to meet people where they are instead of forcing them into a mold they no longer fit. Change the mold, change the result. Love this idea," shared another.

Many people pointed to the collectivist mindset in Japan, where societal well-being is more important than individual ambition, as something to aspire to. But even in Japan, The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders is a novel experiment that has proven to be a success.

"The image of ‘Cool Japan’ is recently gathering much enthusiasm, but I think ‘Warm Japan’ is just as important," said Oguni. "I want to promote a Japan that cultivates a warm, comfortable environment, so people will return home with smiles and a glow in their hearts.”

A beautiful goal for any nation to have. Learn more about The Restaurant for Mistaken Orders here.

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inclusion

Heroes

Grateful diner left a $10,000 tip for the entire staff at a Florida restaurant

Wahoo Seafood Grill/Facebook

When Wahoo Seafood Grill owner Shawn Shepherd got a phone call from an employee about an extraordinarily large tip, his first instinct was to be suspicious. He advised his employee to check the customer's ID and name on the back of the card, which checked out. Even after the point-of-sale transaction went through, Shepherd still checked the next day to make sure the money was still there.

It was. All $10,000 of it.

According to The Gainesville Sun, a man eating at the restaurant with his wife and child had gathered the staff of 10 who were working at the restaurant on August 17 and thanked them for their hard work. Then he paid his $144 bill and added $10,000 on top of it for the employees to split.

"Watching these guys get their check was almost as good as Christmas morning," Shepherd told The Sun.

The restaurant shared a photo of the bill with the tip included, writing:

"On Tuesday night, a customer asked our entire restaurant staff to come to the dining area. He thanked them for showing up and working hard.

Then something incredible happened. He told them he was giving them $1,000 each.

Our staff couldn't believe it.

Wahoo Seafood Grill's owner, Shawn Shepherd said, 'I'm not usually an emotional guy, but this really got me. I'm blown away. We're ALL blown away by his generosity.

The last year and a half hasn't been easy on this industry. We're hurting and we're exhausted, but this incredible act of kindness has restored our faith in humanity.'

Our whole staff would like to thank this generous customer from the bottom of our hearts. We are all going to pay it forward in our own ways. Even the smallest acts of kindness can have a giant ripple effect.

We're just a local, veteran-owned seafood restaurant doing our best to weather this storm — and this is truly the last thing we expected to happen on a regular Tuesday night.

By sharing this, we hope you feel inspired to do something nice for someone today. Be the reason someone believes in the goodness of people."

One of the employees who was called into work that night was a mom whose child has been in and out of the hospital. "It's been absolutely a really stressful time for her," Shepherd said, so the tip was an especially welcome surprise.

Shepherd said the employees working that night had stuck with the business during the past 18 months of upheaval, so he was extra grateful to be able to distribute the generous tip to them.

Wahoo had closed temporarily in late March of 2020 and like thousands of other businesses hit hard by the pandemic, Shepherd had to figure out how to stay afloat and pay employees.

"I knew nothing about curbside, I knew nothing about delivery and take out. We weren't prepared for that. We didn't even have the containers to do it," Shepherd told The Sun, noting that he lost $30,000 worth of food.

With the help of The Florida Restaurant Lodging Association and the Alachua County Chamber of Commerce, he was able to receive emergency funding to pay employees, but even after the restaurant reopened, business was abysmally slow.

"We had no business coming through the front door," Shepherd said.

Shephard said he was indebted to the loyal Wahoo employees who have stuck with him and helped keep the restaurant afloat. How wonderful to see a customer share the same appreciation and use their resources to provide a little relief to people who have been through so much uncertainty.

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A selfless chef won a reality game show and used the prize money to feed his community.

True

Chicago's Turkey Chop Gourmet Grill has no shortage of flavor. And neither does its owner.

Image via BRIJ Fund Media/YouTube.

Quentin Love's restaurant, on Chicago's west side in a neighborhood called West Humboldt Park, lives by a simple rule: "No beef. No pork." There you can get unique dishes like the Jive Turkey Burger on a whole wheat bun or the Rich Boy Sandwich, a grilled fish twist on the classic Po Boy, which usually uses roast beef or fried seafood.

But Love knows it's not just well-to-do Chicagoans who need more diverse meal options. Chicago's sizable homeless and poverty-stricken community could sure use a helping hand, too.

So every Monday afternoon, the restaurant closes for business and offers free meals to the community, instead.

Image via BRIJ Fund Media/YouTube.

Turkey Chop Gourmet Grill opened in 2012 as a continuation of Love's yearslong effort to "attack the food desert theory." He wanted to bring more diverse eating options to neighborhoods around the country in dire need of them.

In 2014, he took the concept even further at the West Humboldt Park location by transforming the restaurant into a local food pantry once a week.

On Monday afternoons, residents of the community pour in to grab free, ready-made meals. It's for anybody in need of a hot, fresh, nutritious bite to eat, whether they're homeless or not.

Love also runs a cooking class out of the restaurant on Monday nights that teaches people in the community how to prepare nutritious meals for themselves and their families.

With support from the Chicago Food Depository, Love and his staff at Turkey Chop Gourmet Grill have given away over 60,000 meals in the past two years, mostly on the back of donations and community volunteers.

But Love says funding has been a constant issue, with him spending nearly $2,000 a month out of his own pocket to finance the project.

When Love got the chance to compete on Food Network's "Guy's Grocery Games," though, he knew he had a chance to fund the program for a long time to come.

Guy Fieri, the eccentric host of "Guy's Grocery Games." Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images.

"They called me (to be on the show)," he said. "It was just a random call. And I saw it as an opportunity."

An opportunity to battle against other chefs in a nationally broadcast, pressure-packed cooking challenge. But it would help him keep his restaurant's community program going.

If he won, anyway.

And that's exactly what Love did. In "Guy's Grocery Games" (or "Triple G"), contestants sprint up and down supermarket aisles, scavenging for ingredients that fit their allotted budget, and have 30 minutes to whip up a meal that'll impress the judges.

Love blew away the competition with his cooking skills and a little help from his grandma's famous mac 'n cheese recipe.

When all was said and done, he walked away with $36,000 in prize money. And he knew exactly what he was going to do with it.

Half of Love's prize money will go toward making sure Turkey Chop Gourmet Grill can continue to feed the community.

The other half will go to another cause close to Love's heart, the United Services Organization, which provides relief to military members and their families.

"The prize money pays for sustainability" for the program, Love said. There are no grand plans to expand nationally, renovate the restaurant, or launch more ambitious projects.

That's not what really matters to Love.

For now, the Turkey Chop Gourmet Grill is just going to keep on giving delicious, nutritious meals to Chicagoans in need.

And thanks to Love's big Food Network win, that's not going to change any time soon.

"Being on the show was great," he said. "I just kept thinking about what I had to do. And the rest is history."

restaurant

Video reveals the 'sneaky' ways fast food restaurants trick you into spending more money

It all starts with the menu.

Sneaky Ways Fast Food Restaurants Get You To Spend Money

The restaurant in Japan where getting your order wrong is totally expected and accepted

It's a beautiful example of social inclusion for people with dementia.

Grateful diner left a $10,000 tip for the entire staff at a Florida restaurant

A selfless chef won a reality game show and used the prize money to feed his community.

Chicago's Turkey Chop Gourmet Grill has no shortage of flavor. And neither does its owner.

So every Monday afternoon, the restaurant closes for business and offers free meals to the community, instead.

When Love got the chance to compete on Food Network's "Guy's Grocery Games," though, he knew he had a chance to fund the program for a long time to come.

Half of Love's prize money will go toward making sure Turkey Chop Gourmet Grill can continue to feed the community.

For now, the Turkey Chop Gourmet Grill is just going to keep on giving delicious, nutritious meals to Chicagoans in need.

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