Understand the science behind restaurants’ loud music, booming echos, and clattering tables.

Source: 3 Reasons Why Restaurants Are So Loud | Bon Appétit

1. Loud music implies a high energy, fun, festive environment and tends to draw in patrons from outside.
2. Music is used to manipulate your dining choices. If the music is sufficiently loud, patrons talk less, order more drinks and drink more. Patrons also tend to eat higher calorie/high fat food items.
3. Some restaurants change the music soundtrack, as needed. For example, when a restaurant becomes busy and has more people waiting for tables, they may slightly increase the music volume and switch to music selections with a faster tempo. Patrons will then tend to eat faster and leave their table, increasing churn for the restaurant.

You may already know how menus are designed to manipulate your choices. One of the newer trends is to remove fractional prices – instead of $11.95, it now says $12 or better yet just “12” with no $ sign.

Like any other product, pricing is also used to steer your selections. Just as in the grocery store, you may see a high-, medium- and low-priced option – with the intent to steer you towards the medium-priced item. They also tend to put the expensive items at the top – knowing the mid-priced items, also overpriced – look like a bargain compared to the expensive item at the top of the menu.

Use of bright and warm colors encourages your hunger motivation to eat more.

Food photos are key to encouraging selection of the item. Similarly, detailed, colorful, flowery language results in selection of an item. This is why you’ll see absurd descriptions about “locally sourced”, “apple wood roasted”, “char broiled”, “seasoned with bay leaves”, “Wisconsin sweat creme”, “farm raised beef” (where else?) and so on to describe a pasta dish.

Menu designers know to put enticing foods on the right side of pages and double page menu options because we tend to gravitate towards the right.

We are manipulated every day, everywhere we go.