I’d say fine if the place offered fries at that time. But that’s not the same as trying to substitute a baked potato for fries, however, which is what the poster I was responding to thought was reasonable. It’s not.
When McDonald’s first got started they didn’t allow you to customize your burger at all. They specialized in getting your order to you as fast as possible and had an ingenious assembly line system designed to do so. For example they didn’t just squirt some mayonnaise on your burger followed by other condiments they had a device that would squirt some mayo, ketchup and mustard all in one go. Someone who said “hold the mayo” would have thrown a kink in the whole operation and slowed things down.
Of course by the time I was old enough to start eating at McDonald’s I was a picky eater like you except that I didn’t even like hamburgers. I used to get a plain Fillet o’Fish. Anybody know when McDonald’s started offering customization on burgers?
The only places I’ve seen “No substitutions” are either really upscale places or small restrautants and it makes sense in those places for different reasons. I’ve never seen a place where something comes with fries and they refuse to give vegetables or something else, though they may charge a little more.
For the smaller places, it seems to me to be a matter of efficiency and inventory. As others said, there’s a ton of reasons why what seems like a small substitution could be a huge hassle. If you’re getting a pasta dish and ask for chicken instead of pork, they might have to make a whole batch of sauce just to serve that order and great time and cost and, really, if you want a dish without pork, there’s probably plenty of other dishes on the menu that don’t have pork. It makes a lot more sense to just refuse it and recommend another dish than make a special order.
For the upscale places, why are you going to a place that specializes in a certain type of food or where the menu was designed by a renowned chef and then wanting them to change things? Again, if you don’t like a particular ingredient or have allergies, pick something else on the menu, and if you don’t like anything else on the menu, what are you doing in an upscale place that is specialized in stuff you don’t like to eat? Also, at these more upscale places, you’re a lot less likely to get something that is easily replaceable like a side of fries and, instead, will probably have an entirely conceptualized dish and it will ruin the aesthetics or presentation or textures or palette or something. If you’re really the type of person who would go to a high end restaurant where that sort of stuff is important and ask them to substitute something that would change that, that’s pretty definitive that you don’t really appreciate what sets that restaurant apart anyway. So yeah, to a certain extent, it is trusting the chef more than you, otherwise why are you in his specialized, high-end restraurant? It’s analagous to going to a concert for one band and then insisting they play stuff from some other band’s catalog. Even if they know the song, they’ll perform their stuff better and that other band will perform their stuff better.
In all of this, sure, there’s plenty of other reasons why some restaurants might do it, because they’re snobby or they don’t want to deal with entitled customers or whatever, but it seems to me that the majority have legitimate reasons that have nothing to do with that.
But then you’ll need some sort of chart for the wait staff to refer to that tells them which substitutions are allowed and which aren’t, and what if someone ask for a sub that isn’t on this chart. That’s going to get really complicated really fast.
Order your food, ask for the sub and they’ll either do it or they can’t. If they can’t give you fries instead of corn just don’t eat the corn or find an entree without corn.
Personally (I’m a picky eater), I’ll find something I like but if I know I’ll have to ask if they can make it differently, I’ll already have a backup in mind in case they say no.
“(i.e., forcing me to pay for it, even if I don’t eat it)” led me to believe that you didn’t want to pay for it. Anyway, sorry for the misunderstanding. I find it baffling that they wouldn’t leave the dressing off as simple as that. So here’s a good example of where some restauranteurs were overzealous about this policy and now they’re out of business. It all works out.
You eat at a laundry? So, how do the socks taste?
The French Laundry is one of the world’s more famous restaurants.
I know of a couple of laundry/restaurant combos. Used to know of a third one, but the restaurant part of it closed.
It means the restaurant is very, very cheap, and probably not very good, so you shouldn’t bother eating there. If was a normal level restaurant, they wouldn’t need to do it. If one food costs more than the other, you can charge more for it. If something is really a part of the meal and you can’t substitute it, you can tell the customer on that specific item without putting it on the menu and making everyone think you’re a cheap restaurant. Or, worse, actually saying it and thus giving poor service by being rude.
And if it’s a high level restaurant, nobody will ask for substitutions. It just isn’t done at high class places. Everyone knows they are there for the chef’s ideas of food.
If people feel entitled to have substitutions, it’s because every restaurant does it. If you insist on not doing it, you’re the one who is entitled because you are bucking the trend. And if you want to be so entitled, you need either the prices or the food to back it up. In my experience, it’s never happened.
It’s similar to how there are no good restaurants that don’t offer free refills on fountain drinks.
Yes, it is. Because, again, that’s what every restaurant that has both types of potato entree does.
And a baked potato is much cheaper than fries, by a long shot. We’re not some idiots who don’t buy food. Potatoes themselves are dirt cheap. And if you serve fries, you will serve more than the average sized baked potato. So even if you make your own fries (which almost no restaurant does), it’s not reasonable.
And if that means you run out of baked potatoes, oh well. First come first serve is a basic concept of commerce in the U.S. It’s not entitlement to expect things to work the way they normally work. It’s entitlement to think you can buck the trend.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
A baked potato costs a restaurant more to serve than french fries.
If you run out of baked potatoes you have dissatisfied customers. Running out of french fries almost never happens.
“Bucking trends” is what entrepreneurism is about. It’s presumptuous to think you can force someone to provide a service they aren’t offering.
Well, that’s not true. Many restaurants will cheerfully do substitutions. Asking the question doesn’t make you “entitled”.
Pitching a huge fit about it if they politely decline does.
Wrong. Many, many very good restaurants do not offer free refills.
Wrong again. :rolleyes:
You’ve clearly never worked in the management of a restaurant above the level of a Burger King.
Do you have a cite for that?
I do.
I’m in the industry. I actually started to post something the other day, but didn’t because, I’ve been just sort of sitting back and watching.
My business sells produce to restaurants, high end and low end ones. I also pulled the price that Sysco (in my area and with no pricing agreement since I don’t buy fries) would charge a restaurant. I don’t have the numbers here, but I can get them. Oddly enough, for the random box of fries that I picked and the bigger sized potatoes that we have (I didn’t check the smaller ones, I’ll have to ask which size restaurants use for baked potatoes now that I think about it), the price of a potato is about the same as 1/3 of a pound of frozen french fries. FTR, I have no idea what a serving of french fries is, but it sounded close and it made the number roughly equal.
Now, keeping in mind that I picked a random box of waffle fries with no pricing agreement means that a restaurant that goes through, say, 10 or 20 cases a week should be able to get them cheaper. But, even if they were the same price, they only take 60 seconds in the frier and not 60 minutes in the oven. They’re made to order and not made two hours before the dinner rush. A box of fries will always yield the same amount whereas a box of potatoes contains the same amount but there’s waste, plus they’ll have to throw out the ones they don’t sell. Lastly, fries come with a side of ketchup. If you order a baked potato, at the very least you’re going to get sour cream (I should check the price on sour cream vs ketchup) and it may come on a separate plate which takes more time to wash. Depending on the restaurant, they may put bring out other sides as well (bacon, green onions etc).
But, even if you want to ignore all the extra stuff that goes along with it (condiments etc), fries are still cheaper. If you really want to get into the details, I can find wattages on friers vs ovens. I do that as part of my cost analysis for some of the things we sell. (As I recall, our convection oven costs about 3 cents per second to run, not much but if you run it for an hour you add almost $2.00 to the recipe)
So, no, a baked potato is not cheaper then fries, not ‘by a long shot’. My cite is 21 years in the industry and the ability to see, first hand, what restaurants are paying for their produce and frozen items. What’s your cite?
This very thing happened at a chain pizza place I worked at years ago. The chain got a really good deal on some specific toppings, and combined them into a very specific pizza they called “The 4-Topper”, and gave a nice deal on the price. Unfortunately, customers assumed that “The 4-Topper” meant the same thing as the regular “4-topping pizza” (as in, “your choice of 4 toppings”), and proceeded to try to swap out every topping for something else. We had to put a stop to that.
Senior citizens are notorious, in my experience, for trying to use substitutions to upgrade one menu item into the more expensive item they actually want, but for which they are unwilling to pay full price.
Yeah, sometimes it’s pretty obvious that a customer is attempting to turn something on my menu into something resembling a dish they had at another, more expensive place.
I think most of us are accustomed to being able to get whatever topping we want on a pizza. There’s a local place I go to that has a bunch of specialty pizzas like chicken honey mustard, taco, baked potato, etc. and it’d be a bit silly to try substitutions on them. But for a pizza called the 4-Topper?
I agree that anger is never the appropriate response (unless the restaurant employees respond rudely to a request). At the same time, restaurants are businesses that need to compete with other restaurants in order to stay in business. In most well-populated areas, there are a whole lot of restaurants out there competing, many of which are completely willing to make reasonable adjustments or substitutions in order to please their customers. Those that refuse are very likely to drive away their clientele to the places that are more accommodating. So, yes, if you don’t like it, go somewhere else, and the restaurant owner who insists on “no substitutions” can preserve his pride all the way to the unemployment line.
Some here may remember Burger King’s advertising campaign of many years ago: “Have it your way.” This campaign was a direct response to McDonald’s policy of no substitutions, and it worked. Burger King became a major force in fast food, largely predicated on the idea that people who preferred their burgers without onions could get them that way.
I’ll give you another example: I love Mexican food, but I dislike beans. Every time I frequent a Mexican restaurant, I request that my dish be prepared with no beans, none in the main item and none on the side. I’ve yet to have my request refused. But, if it was, I’d do one of two things - I’d either order something that had no beans one time, then never return to that restaurant, or, more likely, I’d ask for the check for any drinks that might have been served and then I’d get up and leave. After that, I’d go to one of the gazillion Mexican restaurants that would prepare my food the way I like it without an argument. And the restaurant I walked from? Well, as others have noted, if it goes out of business, that’s not my problem.
The bottom line is that a restaurant owner has the right to run his business any way he sees fit. But if the customers find his policies too confining, and there are other restaurants in the area that offer more flexibility, he won’t get enough business to stay open. That’s just the way the market works. It’s not that people feel “entitled.” Nobody is asking for a handout. I’m willing to pay if I request a change to the menu that is more expensive for the restaurant to provide (though if the cost seems unreasonable to me, that might also weigh against my return to that particular place). This is a business transaction, and it seems to me that the economic power is in the hands of the consumer. Dining out isn’t cheap. If you are willing and able to give me what I want, I may spend my money at your establishment. If not, I’ll find someone who will. If your attitude is, “that’s the menu, take it or leave it,” I’ll almost certainly leave it, and I suspect a lot of other people will as well.
What I really dislike is inconsistency in the policies of the same restaurant.
I have a favorite breakfast place in a resort area. Once, during the off-season, I went in and ordered an omelet and asked them to hold the side of hash browns that they typically serve with the omelet.
Now this place cares about presentation, so the waiter comes out after giving the chef my order and asks me if I would like a sliced tomato on the plate to replace the potatoes. That sounded fabulous so I said yes.
I return during a somewhat busier time and order the omelet with a sliced tomato instead of the potatoes. The waiter looked at me like I was crazy…they eventually managed to accommodate the request but not without a lot of back and forth.
On a third occasion when I ordered the breakfast with a side of tomatoes, they prepared a beautiful small plate with both sliced cherry tomatoes topped with chopped scallions and grilled tomatoes with basil, but they charged extra.
One time I was at a restaurant with some friends, and we had this exchange with the waitress:
Us: “We want the bacon cheeseburger, but could you add some pulled pork on top?”
Her: “Um, no I don’t think we can do that.”
U: “We can pay more, we just want some pulled pork on the burgers.”
H: “Uh-- the cooks won’t do that.”
U: “Why not? You have burgers, you have pulled pork, can’t you just throw a scoop on top? Again, we’ll pay extra for it.”
And this was our favorite part:
H: “Umm… they don’t know how to do that.” :smack: 
But I don’t think this was a matter of the restaurants’ policy or some issue with the cooks, I think the waitress just didn’t want to ask them to do it for whatever reason.
We don’t go there anymore.