My normal breakfast is a cup of coffee and a low-fat power bar. However, once in a blue moon Laura and I like to go out for breakfast on the weekends. We fluctuate between one of the Stax places or Denny’s. This morning, it was Denny’s. There, it became evident that Denny’s blatantly encourages gluttony, pure and simple.
F
irst, their menu is confusing. You’ve got the Grand Slam, the Lumberjack Slam, the All-American Slam, and the Heartland Scamble, among others. What happened to desciptive names such as "two eggs with grits and bacon?" I personally think the confusion is deliberate, and is designed to get you to pay for more and/or order more than you need. Most of these meals are monstrous, and contain enough caloric content to serve the nutritional needs of a small family for three days.
Let’s say you wanted to order something less massive. I wanted two eggs scrambled, a couple of pieces of bacon, grits, and some toast. Laura just wanted pancakes with bacon. I couldn’t find my simple order anywhere on the menu. I could get three eggs with bacon AND sausage AND grits AND a stack of pancakes, or just order what I wanted a la carte and nearly twice the price.
Laura was in the same boat. For example, she could have ordered a stack of pancakes (about $3.90) and a side of bacon (about $3.00). That would have brought her breakfast to about $6.90. For $5.99 I could order a Meat Lover’s Omlette Mega-Breakfast, which included a huge 3-egg omlette stuffed with ham and sausage, four slices of bacon, grits, and a stack of pancakes. To get what we wanted, the simple solution was to order one Mega-Breakfast and give Laura the pancakes and bacon from my plate. For a fraction of the cost of ordering separately, we still got more food than we needed, and will probably skip lunch.
The problem with this is that it costs Denny’s the same amount to serve the food a la carte as it does to serve it in the huge bundles. There is no savings from a production standpoint, and in fact probably costs more. Where they get locked into this is bundling scheme is in the corporate menus and pricing in the computers. It’s easier to punch a button than to figure out pricing at the cash register.
Unless they take the time to figure out the intracasies of ordering, most folks are going to pick one of these gargantuan meals per person and eat far more than they need. It’s no wonder that obesity is such a problem in the US.
[tags]Denny’s, obesity, gluttony, breakfast[/tags]