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Todd Kendall wishes to know
...why is it that in every Mexican (or at least, every Tex-Mex) restaurant, there are always 10-20 "combination plates" that each match three seemingly random food items? Trying to buy the items a la carte involves a substantially higher total price than buying the combo plate.
We all know that bundling can be an effective form of price discrimination but I wonder if that is the case here. Most of these dishes are just different forms of slop. Can it really be that someone loves the quesadillas but not the burritos, or vice versa, and that restaurants can capture more consumer surplus by forcing the two to be consumed together? I am skeptical. More likely behavioral economics is at work. Most buyers don't even know the differences between all these fine Mexican culinary art forms, especially as practiced in the United States. But if they're getting three different kinds of dishes, well, surely they can assume they will be getting something they want. Slop or no slop. There is diversification and a feeling that the restaurant's best dish will not be left unsampled.
One implicit prediction is that the very best Mexican restaurants in America will not resort to this kind of subterfuge and indeed they don't.
Do you have any alternative hypotheses?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 27, 2008 at 06:16 PM in Food and Drink | Permalink
Comments
Slop?!? Is this directed at Tex-Mex qua Tex-Mex or at inferior incarnations thereof?
I agree re: diversification.
Posted by: Amber at Mar 27, 2008 6:51:07 PM
It seems possible that some folks do prefer tacos to enchiladas, although maybe not tacos to tostadas. The behavioral argument might work on the first visit but not on subsequent ones. (Perhaps you could rephrase your argument without the word slop. Not everything is covered in chili-gravy.)
Posted by: me at Mar 27, 2008 6:58:30 PM
Parallel question: why at Target or K-Mart can you buy 3-4 packaged-up pairs of underwear (men's or women's) much cheaper than singles -- but only if you accept some white and some black? Or some horrendous patterns and some plain? Couldn't they manufacture larger quantities the kind most people want?
I understand that the underwear folks, as well as the mexican restaurant folks, think that you will end up spending more money if you buy more even at a lower unit price. And that it must be that once you are sitting at the table or going thru the checkout line, the cost of goods sold is not as important as your total purchase price. Though it seems counter intuitive.
Posted by: mae at Mar 27, 2008 7:05:45 PM
At any number of bakery/delis, there is a lunch special concisely expressed as, soup, salad, sandwich, pick any two of three. With ten-ish soups and salads and three or four soups on the menu, the bases are amply covered for variety, and the existence of this special does not strike me as mysterious.
The equivalent Mexican restaurant could have a pick any three items from this list of ten special, but getting the order right is liable to run into the communication barrier that often exists between the guests and the server at such an establishment.
The enumerated combinations fill the niche while skirting the communications barrier, because they are enumerated.
Posted by: Cyrus at Mar 27, 2008 7:13:09 PM
Every Tex-Mex restaurant I've ever been to features both a combo section ("pick x items off this list for $y") and a selection of entrees. The combo items are usually traditional taqueria fare, while the entrees are, well, entrees. I"m not really sure what the point of this argument is.
Posted by: Sean at Mar 27, 2008 7:14:45 PM
What do we know about serving sizes?
If the combination plate contains less food than the sum of three separate dishes, Tyler's hypothesis admits a fully rational interpretation. People are not diversifying because they don't know their tastes, but because they like variety and would rather eat three smaller portions of different forms of slop than one big portion of a single form.
This would explain why the hypothesis applies to more than the first visit, and why there are many combination plates. In principle, all combinations of three existing dishes could be offered, and surely that would be a number above 20.
Also, the restaurant could be extracting surplus from variety-loving consumers. My uninformed guess is that three people ordering three identical combination plates would pay more than three people ordering each one of the three components. Maybe they would get a greater amount of food, but probably not much more; and I think the restaurant cost function has significant fixed costs.
Posted by: GP at Mar 27, 2008 7:17:47 PM
The local (Conway AR) El Chico restaurant gives you a build your own combo with one, two, three, or more selections from an extensive list. Price depends on the number you select. El Chico is a Dallas based chain, and at least some other Tex-Mex restaurants I have seen do the same thing. Mexican food nut, Joe Horton
Posted by: Joe Horton at Mar 27, 2008 7:39:58 PM
Most of "the very best Mexican restaurants in the US" are within a short driving distance of my house 8~), and almost all have combination plates. If I order the combination, it's not because I'm after the restaurant's best dish but because I get something different from each and sampling more of the same dish isn't as interesting as sampling a little of something else (if the dishes aren't noticeably different on your plate, this is not one of the finer establishments). Combination plates are n-axis indifference curve presets?
What the heck is "chili-gravy"?
Posted by: Eric H at Mar 27, 2008 7:40:17 PM
I'm thinking it's probably just to make ordering easier. Ingredients are the same, just put together a bit differently. At one of my favorite lunch spots I just order "#20" and the waiter/waitress jots it down and goes to the next person. Fairly efficient/fast.
Posted by: Shane M at Mar 27, 2008 7:42:29 PM
I bet it has something to do with production for the kitchen. Combos often facilitate the flux of food at the "back office" especially at rush hours. Tell you cos my brother is a restauranteur.
Posted by: Ricardo Amaral at Mar 27, 2008 7:46:50 PM
The restaurant, by selling combos, can get rid of excess food before it spoils.
Posted by: MIke at Mar 27, 2008 7:47:19 PM
If they sold just one taco for $2, people would just buy one or two tacos. By making the combo plate of 3 tacos with rice and beans (that cost almost nothing) $8, and individual tacos $4, they always get you to spend at least $8.
Since food costs are both the most elastic and the smallest part of the cost of a meal compared to staffing, rent and other overhead, getting you to eat more per visit, and especially to spend a per-person minimum, is key to profitability.
Posted by: Brad at Mar 27, 2008 8:05:09 PM
I have no idea what I order. There's one thing I can't stand. A kind of pasty corn mush shell burrito sort of thing. I have no idea what it's called. It's like a game of Russian roulette when I order at the Mexican restaurant.
Posted by: Andrew at Mar 27, 2008 9:08:39 PM
The combination plate seems to me to be a consumer-friendly means of ordering the Tyler Cowen-way: too much food, but a variety of dishes, yet considerably cheaper than actually ordering the Tyler Cowen way.
Brad's point about marginal costs and GP's point about minimizing waitstaff language-barrier confusion also comes into play.
Tex-Mex in DC is certainly slop, but is quite divine in Houston at the right places. Of course, it's composition-intensive, rather than ingredient-intensive, and bears little relationship to Mexican food at its finest, but I do feel Tex-Mex's absence here in DC painfully.
Posted by: Ted at Mar 27, 2008 9:44:40 PM
Whatever the reason I doubt it is caused by a lack of familiarity with the dishes. I recently moved from San Antonio and all of the taquerias there use numbered combos on their menus, even the best ones on the south side that are frequented almost exclusively by the Hispanic diners.
I would also dispute your last point (unless you meant only fine dining or unalloyed Mexican), as these are probably among the best tex-mex restaurants in the country.
Posted by: Displaced Texan at Mar 27, 2008 10:15:16 PM
SLOP!?!?!?
You need to get out more often. That's like saying that all seafood resturants suck because you don't like the Fillet-o-Fish at MacDonalds
Posted by: Miguel at Mar 27, 2008 11:40:59 PM
I've also wondered about "chili gravy". The "chili gravy" I've had has been great, but the name has always struck me as unappealing.
My guess is that its a rough translation of a type of sauce that has no English analogue.
Posted by: db at Mar 27, 2008 11:41:15 PM
Here in Austin, you see a modest number of combo plates, and they're generally well-chosen, like a selection of better appetizers, or a traditional combo of green salsa, an enchilada, and chicken. Of course, you don't have so much SLOP in the Tex-Mex here.... (or, at, least, we have enough good choices and reviews not to have to waste time in bad places). I can only think of one place here that made me feel like that, and you can guess I've never been back.
On the other hand, the bagels here are just OK, and the crabcakes are just WRONG. Koreans tell me that Austin's favorite Korean restaurant is strange to them. Regional food far from its region is often weird and weak. That, I think, is the real lesson here for Mr. Kendall. Read yer reviews before going out!
Posted by: Jon Kay at Mar 28, 2008 1:40:46 AM
Tyler,
Weren't you the one saying that the entree was dead not that long ago? Given the logic there, why is it surprising that restaurants would group multiple types of food onto one plate?
Posted by: Sam at Mar 28, 2008 1:49:30 AM
Maybe it's because it means less work for the waiters who have to take the orders. I mean, everyone knows the problem: Being at a restaurant in the company of say 6 or 8 people, everyone making his assorted orders ("I take the salad, but with tomato-dressing, and without bread, but instead with..." etc). So could it be a way to forgo cumbersome ordering-procedures that simply take too much time needed for other clients?
Posted by: pecar at Mar 28, 2008 2:29:45 AM
Have you tried this?
http://ideas.repec.org/p/cla/levrem/784828000000000628.html
Posted by: Rainer at Mar 28, 2008 3:58:46 AM
This discussion gives a lot of credit to Tex-Mex menu planners. The rational choice being made here may very well be to copy or even purchase an existing menu rather than engaging in the level of thought discussed above. The observation about the combos has the corollary that many of the combos are the same things in the same order--and occasionally even bearing the same order number. Where it's all "slop", it wouldn't seem to make much sense to put more thought into the pricing than into the food, especially as the main ingredients are often the same.
Now, in Tex-Mex restaurants where the food quality is higher, it often seems that there are fewer or no combo choices, or more of the "make your own". There might very well be a correlation between food quality and thoughtfulness about price, or even between food quality and business acumen. Would be an interesting field study.
By the way, the Netherlands suffers from an almost complete absence of Mexican and Tex-Mex food, probably due to location and history, and perhaps local tastes. When I have been craving it here, I often find that the food is prepared as if the proprietors had read a book about Mexico but not actually been there. This discussion is making me hungry.
Posted by: J.Lo at Mar 28, 2008 5:29:32 AM
Maybe it's just a phase-- once upon a time, you had combination plates in all Chinese restaurants (or sometimes the 'one from column A, two from column B' thing). But times and tastes change-- I haven't eaten egg foo yong in the past thirty years or so...
Posted by: MattF at Mar 28, 2008 8:48:18 AM
Tradition. When people go to Mexican restaurants, they expect combination plates. They want combination plates. So that's what they get.
You might as well ask why all Chinese take-out places have kung-pao chicken and beef hunan style (speaking of slop).
Posted by: ostap at Mar 28, 2008 8:52:01 AM
Slop????? Really! And this somehow qualifies you as an expert?
Note ordering time and kitchen prep time may be less with the combo plates. Having worked in a restaurant kitchen briefly, I know there's a lot of time pressure and a "#1" can be prepared faster with motor memory than 3 random items. Note combo plates often say "no substitutions, please".
Posted by: zbicyclist at Mar 28, 2008 9:29:40 AM
