[jhermsmeyer]

If this attempt at price discrimination does indeed become popular it will be via digital menus that update their pricing automatically, not via fiddly coupons. We are quite aways away from this still due to hardware costs and the sheer number of tablets that would be needed at most full service restaurants.

I have no doubt it would be a hit with consumers. Tuesday nights out would become "a thing" for the price sensitive. That's good for everyone.

[K2h]

I was pretty impressed with the low tech solution in the article. I thought of the same thing as you at first, digital menus online, or on the table, or.. digital paper menus.

They instead just offer a discount up front. 10-30% if you book a particlular time. So most everyone except the fractional multiplier afraid will know how to adjust the prices on the fly.

as an aside - many cheap places that I end up at have menus posted outside for the foot trafic, that may be the perfect place to replace it with a digital sign for dynamic pricing.

[jhermsmeyer]

Agreed. There are low tech ways to achieve a similar result. But operators, servers and managers absolutely loathe anything that changes their steps of service.

The winning solution will be completely transparent to their current workflow, and will also be seamless to the customer. Until this happens I don't think we'll see widespread adoption of new pricing strategies.

For instance, a pricing increase when many/most seats are filled is probably best way to discriminate in a restaurant. Sophisticated pricing strategies like those could become commonplace with digital menus, and the staff wouldn't have to think about it - but they would see the effect in their tip total.

[endersshadow]

I'd imagine that making easily-printed menus that are weekday/weekend prices (only two ways to discriminate) would be the way to go immediately.

One way to go that would be interesting is to remove the prices all together, and do a prix fixe menu, with the price variable depending on when you get there (have a chalkboard or a waiter tell you upon arrival). This would be low cost to implement, and certainly something worth investigating if you're a high-end restaurant.

[sadga]

Different menus for lunch vs dinner vs weekend brunch?

Chalkboard menus?

"Market price"?

Gosh, what will the next innovation be?

[michaelt]

Vouchering is a type of price discrimination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination

If I drop my prices from $30 to $20 and sell out 200 seats, I've made $4000. If I fill 100 seats with walk-in customers at $30 and 100 with voucher customers at $20, I've made $5000.