The thread is general, more than the pizza special. I think food specials are exempt, because of the nature of the business. A lot has to be thrown out (which should be its own discussion. Why, when there are so many underfed, must food be thrown out? Answer: because lawyers)
But yes, I feel gulty when I (used to() go to sports bars to watch the game. I never drink their beer. I roder prints from Walgreens, and they always have special, like 50% off. If I’m ordering just a few prints, I never use the coupon. If I did, they;d lose money on the envelope holding my one print.
“Sociopathic” in my comment means “I got mine!”. And damn the store “stupid enough to lose money”. I want my local businesses to remain in business. Keeping the business open is thinking past the money you’re saving today.
When I was a starving student, hell yeah I took advantage of businesses.Screw them! Capitalist exploiters! Then I grew up.
I tend to look at it as a corporate gamble. They’re betting that when you come in for your photographic prints, that you end up getting a pack of gum, or some other incidental item that you spotted while doing so. Or if they’re lucky, you remember multiple things that you have meant to pick up, and just get them all while you’re there. I know that happens to me when I go to the drugstore, whether there’s a special or not. The discount on the prints is just a way to get you in the door another time so that you’ll do what you generally do when you’re in the store.
It’s literally how loss leaders work. The idea is to get you in the door, and then sell you other stuff. Same thing with bundling- they’ll price the bundle below where it would sell normally, but they’ll make money on the bundle, even if there’s one item that is not a money-maker.
But like I was saying, the whole argument seems to hinge around whether the people running the business know what they’re doing or not. If they do, then they’re just trying to make more money, and taking advantage of their specials is how you play the consumer/retailer game. If they don’t, then it’s a bit more Darwinian, but they probably shouldn’t be in business, and you’re not really changing that by taking advantage of the specials while you can.
But there’s also the feature of keeping regulars happy.
My local pub does a special deal every year at this point. If you buy a $50 gift card, you get a $20 gift certificate as a bonus. The card can be used for anything, but the certificate is only for food. So when it comes time to pay the bill, some people will first buy a gift card, and then use that to pay their bill. It costs them the exact same that day, but they get the free $20 to use on food the next time.
The pub doesn’t mind, because the people doing this also show up the other 11 months of the year. They’re the ones keeping the lights on in between the Christmas Rush crowds.
I do have an example of people “taking advantage” of something retail.
Way many years ago, I was security at a Ralphs store (IIRC). Ralphs announced that if the sticker /real price disagreed with the price on the shelf- the product was free. We handed out a few items, but always to a customer. (One lucky customer got 4 boxes of disposable diapers).
Then a team of 4 people came in and swept the store. They found dozens of items- mostly really obscure items. Put them all in the cart- came up and demanded them free.
It took hours to check and recheck, and the Managers were pissed. I had to keep an eye on the team. Finally most (but not all) of the items were verified (a couple times they had been suspected of knocking a number off- which didnt count, of course).
While it does carry some weight, I don’t think “it was their decision” is a completely sufficient justification. Just because something isn’t technically against the rules doesn’t make it unethical. I would feel guilty not leaving a tip for my server at a sit-down restaurant, or buying something with the intention of using it once and then returning it for a full refund. I wouldn’t just say “If they didn’t specifically forbid it, that’s on them.”
If I were deliberately taking advantage of a genuine loss leader, such that an establishment was actually losing money on me, I would feel guilty. One, because I was causing them to lose money, and two, because I would potentially be the reason why they’d end that policy, and I don’t want to be the guy who inspires “This is why we can’t have nice things.”
Another infamous example along these lines: an entrepreneur once took advantage of parcel post rates to ship the entire exterior of a bank through the mail, brick by brick.
Even if they are taking a loss on sales, they may be trying to pull in new customers who’ll pay full price on future visits.
Might not be the best time of day for trying this though, unless there are people coming out of nearby bars, etc. who fancy something to eat.
If four people could check tens of thousands of price stickers against shelf labels in an hour or two, you should have hired them as consultants. That’s some spectacular productivity.
At any rate, they did you a favor by alerting you to mispriced items. You wouldn’t want people paying more for items than the shelf label indicated, would you? That would be unfair, possibly illegal, a “weights & measures” violation at any rate.
I hope the management was all over those items and made sure that the price stickers or the shelf labels were changed lickety-split. Right?
If on the other hand they checked a couple of hundred items (which is more reasonable for a team of four in a couple of hours) and found dozens of discrepancies, someone in the store should have been fired.
Back in the dark ages, I was Assistant Manager of a chain drugstore you’ve all heard of. If we got more than 10 “customer satisfaction” claims (free item given due to price charged being higher than the shelf label) in a week we’d get an overnight price integrity crew, and a write-up of the store management team. A dozen people checking the entire store overnight. That’s for a drugstore with maybe 3-5 thousand SKUs, not a supermarket with 25-40 thousand.
I think the OP may underestimate the profit margin of “ordinary” things at retail.
Many years ago, when I lived in LA, the bars along Ventura Blvd had “date nights” on Tuesday and Thursday. Their regular menu offered any complete meal at a 2 for 1 price. These bars had really good food – steaks, seafood, etc. and not badly priced at regular prices, but on these nights, it was really a bargain for the customer. If fact, those were the only nights I would go there, and they sold a LOT of dinners on date nights.
I realize they may have made it up from drinks, but there were no drink minimums, so they must have taken all factors into account and offered the bargain anyway.
Another example: Our local take-n-bake pizza joint offers all large pizzas for $11 each on Tuesdays only – regular prices are from $17 to $25. They have so much business that they have extra employees come in just for that night. Any they aren’t making any money from expensive mixed drinks, since they don’t offer any.
I worked pizza in college and did the daily books. Food cost was rarely more than 25% of what was in the till. Even with other costs, half-off would still do better than break even. Even without selling drinks, the owner is keeping his workers employed and paying the rest of his bills without anymore cost to him than if the place was closed early.
Where I live, there used to be this terrific pizza place called Brixx that offered two-for-one pizzas after 10 p.m. And I took advantage. Boy, did I ever take advantage! There were more than a couple of occasions where I wandered in at approximately 10:01 p.m. It never occurred to me that I should feel weird about it. Either they offered the deal, or they weren’t going to be making any money off me, because I simply couldn’t afford their pizzas at the regular price.
I’m with the OP: I feel a sense of reciprocity with Mom & Pop operations. I don’t go as far as Just_Asking_Questions though. I try to pay cash rather than credit for example (something that DrDeth informed me is not always for the best if for example the family operates in more than one location).
Ralphs is a chain of 183 stores. I’ve never shopped there, but I’m more likely to sympathize with the perps, provided they were acting legally. My take is that if dozens of items are mispriced, then Ralphs needs to get its act together and improve the accuracy of its sticker prices. If the perps were working with employees, then my opinion changes: that’s not ok (and it’s probably illegal besides).