…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?
Slop?!? Is this directed at Tex-Mex qua Tex-Mex or at inferior incarnations thereof?
I agree re: diversification.
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.
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.
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
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.
The restaurant, by selling combos, can get rid of excess food before it spoils.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Have you tried this?
http://ideas.repec.org/p/cla/levrem/784828000000000628.html
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…
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”.
What you call “chili gravy” is either red chili sauce or green chili sauce. Probably from your description red chili sauce. There are many ways of making it, and once you get west of Gallup, NM and order red chili sauce, what you’ll get is salsa instead.
But your strictures on it are like dismissing all tea because you ordered “tea” in a Georgia truck stop and got a huge glass of teabag-flavored sugar water. If you’re ever in Albuquerque, let me know and I’ll take you to a cheap popular New Mexican restaurant and you can try the cuisine there.
On the other hand, it’s often possible to order off the menu. I went recently to the new Tex-Mex place that’s opened on 20th St. in Crystal City (Arlington, VA). I was just coming off the flu, and wanted rice and beans for lunch. It wasn’t on the menu. They served it graciously, brought me a small side of a different kind of beans to try, and charged me $1.54, give or take a dime.
I was a small woman dining alone, so perhaps the service is partially a reflection of the fact that the server and owner thought I probably couldn’t handle a full plate of three tacos plus rice, beans, and salad. True, I can’t.
But it really hit the spot. So I tipped 300 or 400%.
If the restaurant only has ten items, the menu will fit on one sheet of 8×11 paper and as a diner, I will feel frustrated by the appalling lack of variety. Imagine now that the same ten items are grouped into modest twos, hearty threes and gluttonous fours. The menu is a six-page, 14×9, glossy-coated phone book sort of thing and I will feel like I have been given ample choice in dining.
I would suggest that perhaps customers have a very quickly diminishing marginal return on eating any one given food item at most Tex-Mex restaurants. By giving people 1/3 of an order of three items the restaurant may keep people from reaching the “ugghhhh…no more!” point as quickly.
One other possible motivation is competitive – a reaction to the burger joints, who at least in my area were the first to offer combo meals.
Mexican restaurants have been doing combo plates forever, btw. It probably started with a tostada on the side of the enchilada plate as an add on, and grew from there. Since Mexican is basically premade and ladled out (most take hours to make from scratch) rather than cooked to order when the customer is waiting, it is much cheaper to mix-and-match than it would be in a French place or with “American” cuisine. Just take two enchiladas from bin a and one tostada from bin b, top with appropriate toppings, slop on some rice and beans, and you have a combo platter.
Is there any difference in price if the combination happens to be legal or not? What if the tamale is legal, but the enchilada is illegal? Is it OK to eat food prepared in a legally licensed restaurant by illegal cooks?
It’s a simple matter of filling out their menu, and getting you to buy more food than you normally might.
I think Shane M. is right. It lowers the cost of communicating one’s order to the server. In restaurants where English is likely to be a second language for the server and the only language of the customer, the numbered combinations greatly lower the language barrier.
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