Nudges on restaurant menu cards

Marginal Revolution draws attention to an extract from William Poundstone's new book, Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It), which dissects the marketing tricks built into restaurant menus.



An explanation of the typography, location of items etc is available here.

Update 1
Times has this article about how restaurants are embracing techniques from behavioural psychology to beat the recession - "magic combination of prices, adjectives, fonts, type sizes, ink colors and placement on the page can coax diners into spending a little more money". It draws attention to the considerable new research into the science of menu pricing and writing.