The Sneaky Pricing Tactic Fast Food Chains Use To Get You To Spend More

Those of us humans who read from left to right are particularly vulnerable to a questionable pricing gimmick. It's a trick that makes you more than willing to pay for a tasty restaurant burger that costs $7.99 — and balk at one that sets you back $8 — even though the price differs by only a penny. This trick goes by many names. Charm pricing. Psychological pricing. And the rule of nines.

It works like this. Because most people in the Western world read from left to right, it's the first number or letter in a sequence that the foodie's brain pays attention to. In the example above, your brain sees the price as seven bucks instead of eight. The nine at the end of the price miraculously disappears because the human brain is kinda lazy and just sort of deletes it in the name of efficiency.

Your brain's willingness to focus on the price decreases in direct proportion to how far away the eye is from the first number in the sequence. Plain English? The seven at the front of the price tag comes in crystal clear. The last nine in the sequence? For the brain, not so much. The price tag might as well read "$7-blah-blah." Expert designers of crafty restaurant menus for fast food chains take advantage of this cheap psychological trick by knocking the price of your burger or mini pizza down by a cent.

Most of the time, charm pricing is used on menus that are geared toward consumers on a budget. However, not all eateries want their prices to scream "Everything here is cheap!" Take fine dining establishments. A Michelin-starred restaurant like Le Cinq in Paris, or Jungsik in New York, is unlikely to use such a pricing strategy. A $40 appetizer would be priced at $40, not $39.99 because the patrons aren't on a budget — and those restaurants aren't budget brands.

In these cases, the more expensive the item, the higher the perceived quality. Note the word "perceived" here. The reality is, unless you're in charge of buying supplies for a restaurant kitchen, you (and everyone else) don't really have any idea how much something costs. Essentially, patrons evaluate a menu price based only off of what the restaurant tells them about it. This leaves them more vulnerable to psychological hacks like these.

In other words, the burger that costs a restaurant $2 or $3 might seem to be reasonably priced at $7.99 for the average consumer, particularly if said burger gets ordered in haste at a quick fast food drive-thru during the lunch hour. Lowering the price by a penny, therefore, makes it seem like a steal; Though the reality is, in many cases, it isn't the consumer that gets the deal, but rather the fast food joint.