So there’s a bar down the street from me that has really good pizza and after midnight it’s half off. I was really craving some pizza late at night, so I headed over and ordered a 14" supreme (taking home half of it). Their prices are already quite low, so what was normally a $17 pizza became an $8.50 one. There’s no way they’re making money off selling a large supreme pizza for $8.50, it’s just meant to get people in the door and have a few beers while they’re there. I didn’t feel like drinking, but I felt guilty for taking advantage of what must be a loss leader for them, so I ordered a beer with it.
And then I wondered - do other people even worry about that? I don’t think there’s anything unethical for taking a deal as offered, but I think it activates my sense of reciprocity. You’re doing me a favor by cutting a deal, so I’m going to repay you by buying something else too and making it worth your while. I don’t want you to feel like they’re losing because you offered a nice deal.
I tend not to apply this logic so much the larger and more impersonal the business is. If it’s amazon or walmart making a loss leader deal, I probably won’t feel bad for taking it. They’re big and impersonal and have enough data to understand that they’re maximizing their revenue with the move. I wonder, too, if there’s some social pressure there too. Online is anonymous. Whereas at this bar, if I ordered the pizza and nothing else, I’ll be sitting there for a while looking like a cheap skate. I normally don’t care terribly much what other people think of me, but I think it plays some role here. Employees generally probably don’t care, but if it’s a small enough business the owner (or family) may be there. In this case, there was one guy working the bar, and he was in his 70s, so for all I know he was the owner.
But a small business is a different story than a giant retailer. They may just barely be staying afloat. They might be trying desperation moves like loss leaders just to get people in the door. I feel kind of bad by potentially exploiting that.
I’m not saying that this is the right way to feel or arguing in favor for it. I’m just curious if these thoughts and feelings occur to other people or if I’m being weird by thinking about it.
I do not believe for one second that bar is actually losing any money on those half priced pizza. If they’re losing money on each individual pizza but increasing profits on alcohol sales, fine, I still don’t feel sorry for them even if they’re not making anything on my pizza sale.
In this particular case, I might also guess that the bar’s kitchen would be throwing out at least some of the day’s fresh ingredients when they closed; the discount post-midnight pizza is there to use up ingredients that would otherwise get tossed, so they are at least making something off of it.
My guess is that business at the pizza place slows down a lot after midnight, and they’d like to sell the pizza ingredients while they are fresh enough to use; the half price deal encourages late night sales.
I may be wrong, that’s just a WAG, based on visiting a Napoleon’s Bakery (it’s a Hawai’i thing) just before closing - we ordered a few items and the guy behind the counter threw in a zillion more pastries for free.
There is nothing unethical about taking advantage of a deal you’re offered. I understand where the OP is coming from as I too can easily feel guilty about such things, but both of us should stop feeling guilty and enjoy the deal.
That was my immediate guess. It’s like discounting the unsold seats at an event. May as well get something for it. A pizza place doesn’t want to get a reputation for selling pies made with old ingredients, and they have to pay the staff until closing anyway.
Anyway, no, I wouldn’t feel guilty about buying the food for the price they are charging.
Yeah, that wold be my take on it. When I worked at Pizza Hut, we tossed a lot of stuff at the end of the day. When you have to make dough ahead of time, you either end up with too little, and miss some sales because you run out, or you make a bit too much, and throw some out.
I never feel guilty when a business offers me a discount on something. It’s 100% their choice to do so. I don’t expect businesses to do it on a regular basis, but customers like to get a deal and businesses don’t like to throw away something they can sell at a discount. Everybody wins.
That probably figures into their calculations in offering the deal.
This thread brought back a memory of visiting a modest-sized plant nursery one fall. At that time of year, a lot of nurseries discount perennials and woody plants to move them out and avoid having to discard them or somehow find winter storage space for plants that would take awhile to rejuvenate and wouldn’t look so great for sale in early spring. I don’t feel bad about taking them up on their offers.
This one joint was still selling virtually everything at full price and apparently had even raised prices recently, but I managed to find one mature perennial that was still marked at the price originally set when it was a smaller plant earlier in the year. When I brought it up to the cash register, the (owner??) remarked snidely on my “bargain”. Somehow, I don’t think trying to guilt the customer about a reasonably good deal is an effective way to ensure future business.
Unless it’s obviously some kind of “printing” error (or typo in an email nowadays, more likely) the seller is responsible for the offers they put out. Legally and ethically.
In my experience small businesses are treated way more leniently by regulators (and the press, social media, etc) when they play games with offers. Like running out of loss leaders within 30 minutes of opening on the first day, then relying on “limited quantities” fine print disclaimer that would get a regional or national chain in a lot of trouble.
When Gentleman George the Greengrocer does it he’s a lovable scamp. When Global Chain Food does it it’s organized crime.
One of my sons owns 3 restaurants. One very upscale, one a medium priced sit down, and one a very nice bar & grill in lake country. I ran this past him and he said while many restaurants have razor thin margins they are still making a profit at that price.
The 3 things that kill a restaurant are:
*Lack of sales (obviously)
*Employee and vendor theft
*An imbalance of ratio in the amount of employees to patronage.
That’s according to him. I know nothing of the business.
there was a bar/restaurant close to where I grew up. Back in the early 90’s before chicken wings were a profit center, they were a loss leader. This bar offered them for $0.10 a piece on Thursdays. My friends and I in high school would go there and order about 40 wings or so each, along with water. As you can imagine, management soon placed restrictions on the offer (only in combination with an entree, only in the bar area where you had to be 21 to enter, etc.).
So, there is nothing unethical about it, but if everyone takes advantage of loss leading offers (and I’m not convinced that half off pizzas result in a loss to an establishment), then the offer will soon be withdrawn. Such offers not sustainable on their own.
And with pizza, there’s one easy way to cut the cost of making it: put less cheese on it. The cheese is the single most expensive item, so even a 25% reduction in cheese for these late-night pizzas as compared to their normal ones would make a big difference. Cheese was the one ingredient we didn’t ever throw out at the end of the day. It’s worth a lot more, and keeps better than the fresh ingredients, that being the whole purpose of cheese, after all.
The classic coupon pricing example is that their item costs $2 and they price it at $5. Most people will buy it at $5, but there’s some segment of the population unwilling to buy it at $5, but who will buy it at $3.
So they issue a coupon discounting it to $3, if you’re willing to jump through some hoops- clipping the coupon and bringing it is the classic one. The customer gets their cheaper item, and the manufacturer gets $1 that they otherwise would not have got had they not issued the coupon.
This is the same sort of thing- they have dough that will no longer be good in short order and toppings on hand, so they may as well sell some discounted pizzas and make some money rather than none at all.
What’s sociopathic? We’re all assuming small businessowners know how to operate a business. That’s the operative concept here.
I might agree if someone roamed around specifically looking for distressed businesses in order to play retail vulture at them like that, but this isn’t the case. And absent any obvious indicators otherwise, it’s kind of dumb to assume that a special like that is evidence of the business struggling as well.
