Published on March 6th, 2018 | by Sunit Nandi

Why is it idiotic to pay full price for your meals at your favourite food joints?

We all know that a night out can get really expensive today. The prices of entities have only skyrocketed in recent times and the same can be said for food. Gone are the days when your favourite pizza used to cost a few hundred bucks and now you have to pay an unreasonable amount for something that tastes worse.

Now, while it’s true that food isn’t as cost effective as it used to be, but there are a lot of contributing factors that lead to the ridiculous prices at your favourite food joints.

Obscure Taxes: If you aren’t familiar with the taxing system, then food joints can sometimes add hidden taxes to your order, thus raising the price. It isn’t uncommon and most of the times they masquerade it well. In places such as India, you can often find a column dubbed as “service tax” on your final bill. Now this isn’t a necessary tax and isn’t mandated by the government but nonetheless you get charged anyway because of certain privileges provided by the restaurant which may add to the overall experience but nonetheless, they tend to increase your overall bill.
Location: Depending on a specific location, a food joint can have different prices. Some may be located in less crowded areas and need attractive pricing schemes to lure in customers. While others that are located in extensively posh/high end areas ten to have higher prices just because their location has increased amounts of 3rd party expenses.
Competition: Say that the food joint is exclusive to one area and there aren’t any competitors nearby. Sometimes, such lack of competition can make certain joints ramp up prices just because they can.
Exclusivity: Again, a clear indication of unfair pricing can be seen in food joints that are exclusive and offer a higher degree of sophistication and quality than your run off the mill dominos pizzas.

So as you can see, there are a lot of contributing factors that can lead to ramped up prices at your favourite food joints. And most of time, it’s the restaurant that is responsible for the ridiculous pricing. And even when you see a great deal at a TV ad, remember that it doesn’t say “taxes included” in the price of the commodity.

So what can you do about it? Well normally you don’t really have much of a choice but now we live in an age of marketing and suffice to say that you can get away with a pretty sweet deal on your favourite meal with just a few clicks on the internet.

You see, in this age of marketing and promotion, if a food joint wants to succeed, they have to follow the simple policy of “there is as much joy in giving as there is in receiving.” Meaning that, they can still charge you fully for the item but they wouldn’t, unless you knew your way around.

Enter Discount promotions

Discount vouchers aren’t uncommon and I’m pretty sure that your visit to the shopping mall has definitely given you some points on your payback card that you can redeem on your next purchase. However this same thing doesn’t necessarily apply to food joints as they don’t want you to avail the discount in the first place. So how can you hunt for a good deal for a food joint?

Existing customer privilege: Contrary to what I said earlier, there are some joints that will actually send out SMS to their loyal customers to come and have a meal at their joints. They usually contain some kind of discount coupons that you can redeem to get a significant discount on your next meal. However this may be limited to existing customers who have remained faithful to the food joint and may not necessarily be sent out to random people. Dominos is one such food chain that does it. Dominos vouchers & gift cards are actively being sent out to existing customers so that they can avail some kind of offer or discount for their purchase.
Promotional Offers: This is pretty self-explanatory but if a food joint feels like they getting enough attention, they have a tendency to hand out good deals for limited time periods. But the reason that I bring this up is because, sometimes food chains tend to offer very decent deals to first time customers and mostly of the time it goes unnoticed because of less promotion. However, the way around this is to keep track of such deals using online services such as Desidime. They index offers and coupons for a number of places but you can also source some best offers & deals from DesiDime.
Online Offers: Online platforms are a great way to source some awesome deals and discounts for food chains. However most it gets missed because many websites catalogue expired deals or coupons that aren’t valid for redeeming. However amidst the seas of websites, desidime and zingoy are two of the best websites to go deal hunting. The offers and vouchers bought forward by the respective food joints are updated regularly and you can be rest assured that you are getting the latest and the best deals on food exclusively on these websites.
Redeemable discount coupons: There is another type of promotional material that often gets missed by a majority of the people who transact using online services. Sometimes a few websites may give you the option to get redeemable coupons and vouchers whenever you make a transaction on their website. It often gets mistaken for ads but in reality, getting Rs.200 less on a voucher that only cost you Rs.10 is a really good deal. These are particularly common with online wallets like Paytm and mobiwik where on purchases for mobile recharges or other commodities grants you access to such offer coupons.

Bottom-line

So there are a lot of ways by which you can avail discounts on your favourite food joints. The silver lining here is that there is a lot of competition now in the food business and every chain is trying their best to gain as many customers as possible and that opens opportunities for customers. Also in my experience, it is almost always crucial that you know your favourite food joint in and around have your phone linked to their database so they can inform you of active offers. And also online portals do offer some good deals so make sure to check up on that if you are planning on visiting your favourite hangout restaurant anytime soon. After all, who doesn’t love good food, especially when it’s much more affordable?

Tags: favourite, food joints, full price, idiotic, pay, shopping

About the Author

Sunit Nandi I'm the leader of Techno FAQ. Also an engineering college student with immense interest in science and technology. Other interests include literature, coin collecting, gardening and photography. Always wish to live life like there's no tomorrow.