Centives

  • Home
  • About
  • Contributors
  • Extras
    • Baseball Player Value Calculator
    • Monopoly Property Value Calculators
      • Advanced Monopoly Property Value Calculator
      • Basic Monopoly Property Value Calculator
      • Monopoly Property List
    • Pizza Topping Markup Calculator
  • Greatest Hits

Blog

Search Results

Next Entries →

The Evolution Of Restaurant Food

12:00 pm in Daily Bulletin, Signature

Being in the restaurant business is difficult writes Tony Eldred. Competition is intense, rents are high, and the price of menu items haven’t risen much with inflation. In these circumstances restaurants have come up with innovative ways to continue to survive. They include:

  • 20 years ago you used to get your meal on one plate. Now there’s a Lego set approach were you have a main and then side courses. This was a stealth-price rise.
  • Then there was piling. The main course got smaller and was placed on top of cheaper ingredients such as cabbage. This was called art, but it was really about profits.
  • People judge a restaurant based on the prices of its main course. This left restaurants free to raise the prices of beverages and deserts, although there was a limit even to this.
  • Nowadays you see the rise of tasting or shared plates. The portions are tiny, the prices are high, but it appeals to the social media generation and creates a positive customer perception.
  • Restaurants have also stopped taking bookings. Charging a deposit brings negative PR and no-shows are a revenue killer.

The entire article focuses on the Australian restaurant scene, and is a response to another article complaining about the state of the restaurant industry. You can read more including the actual margins of restaurants and how they compare to putting money in a fixed deposit in the bank, what we should really be paying for coffee, the rise of secondary meat cuts, and the experience of the author, over here.

Source: The Age

Via: Marginal Revolution

Comments Off on The Evolution Of Restaurant Food

New York’s Life Boost

12:00 pm in Daily Bulletin

Aaron Carroll reported on a fascinating trend: New York City’s life expectancy has been rising much faster than the rest of America’s life expectancy (perhaps the film-makers are somehow helping?) Highlights include:

  • The most impressive is Manhattan. Its life expectancy rose by 10 years between 1987 and 2009. In the rest of the US it only increased by 1.7 years per decade.
  • This might be due to various NYC health initiatives. They include calorie labels on chain restaurant menu items like McDonald’s Big Mac, a ban on trans-fat as well as public smoking, and extra bicycle lanes.
  • The Bronx is the poorest urban county in the United States, yet it was still in the top percentile of America’s 3147 cities and counties in terms of life expectancy gains.

To read more including other reasons for why it might have risen, why it can’t be due to the reduction in homicides and traffic fatalities, why immigration isn’t the likely explanation, and a link to a follow-up post responding to the criticisms that have arisen, click here.

Source: The Incidental Economist

Comments Off on New York’s Life Boost

Honduras’ Prison Free Markets

12:00 pm in Daily Bulletin, Signature

In the prisons of Honduras, the administrators have given up on creating a system of law and order. Instead they have staked out their perimeters along the outskirts of the institution and let activity go unregulated within. This has led to the rise of prison-economies. Some truly remarkable highlights include:

  • In a prison that is mimicked throughout the country there is a yellow “line of death” that separates the inner sanctum of the prisoners from those of the officers. The inmates understand that if they cross the line, the police officers will shoot them. The police officers, on the other hand, rarely cross the line onto the inmate’s side.
  • Within the ‘prison’ there exist a free market where it’s possible to buy consumer electronics and even prostitutes. Some fascinating examples include:
    • New inmates have to choose which living space they can afford. The worst goes for about $50, while the best places can cost as much as $750.
    • For about $3.50 inmates can have their floors cleaned.
    • There are mechanics who can repair air conditioners.
    • One inmate opened a restaurant business with laminated menus that advertise double hamburgers. He has employed two waiters and intends to sell his business once he is released.
    • Prostitutes from the free world are also available for the night.
  • The profits from the various enterprises are distributed among the workers, stall owners, and prisoner administrators.
  • Administrators say that all of this is necessary. The $6,000 that they make per month is used to buy food or medical services. If they were limited to the state’s budget for food (60 cents a day) the inmates would all starve.
  • Journalists gain access to the prison not through the administrators, but with permission from the head inmate who provided eight other prisoners as body guards.

To read the rest of what is a truly fascinating article, and to find out why the prisoners have keys to their own cells, the safety record of these prisons, the issue of overcrowding, the prospects for reform, the role of corruption, some of the other products available, the people who move in and out of the prisons at will, what would happen in a fire, why an inmate was beheaded, the role that ‘elections’ play in these societies, a time when the prisoners took over, what administrators have to say, and what the UN has to say, click here.

Source: Reuters

Via: Marginal Revolution

Comments Off on Honduras’ Prison Free Markets

The Future Of Cinema? Edible Films

12:00 pm in Daily Bulletin, Signature

3-D? That’s so passé. Ruth Jamieson explores what may be the next evolution of the cinema going experience: edible movies. Highlights include:

  • The Electric Cinema in London tried out a screening of Pan’s Labyrinth where each audience member was given a tray of food with numbered cups and parcels.
  • At various points in the movie an usher would hold up a number to indicate that the audience should eat that item on their tray.
  • For example in the opening scene the characters are travelling through a forest. Audience members are invited to eat their pine-scented popcorn which has a woody aroma to it, transporting you to the forest.
  • People who would have glossed over the line “there is not a single home without fire or bread” in a standard screening of the film are unlikely to ever forget it after they ate the hot chili biscuits that accompanied the line.
  • At other times though the link between the food item and the action on-screen is less clear, making the experience distracting.
  • The organizers of the event admit that it’s experimental. Next time they want to focus more on aromas and less on food.
  • The movie industry is trying out innovative new things to make the theater-going experience impossible to pirate.

Read many more examples of the types of things you’re expected to ingest, what the repulsive menu looked like for a film based on the book Perfume, at what point you’re asked to drink a gin-cocktail and reflections on whether or not it adds to the overall film experience or is just a pointless novelty over here.

Source: The Guardian

Via: Marginal Revolution

Comments Off on The Future Of Cinema? Edible Films

Pizza Topping Markup Calculator

12:42 pm in

Centives decided to take a look at the mark-up on the toppings for a pizza. Read the rest of this entry →

No Comments »

Starting a Restaurant? The Key to Success!

12:00 pm in Daily Bulletin

In recent years there has been a proliferation of restaurants such as The Meatball Factory, Rice to Riches and Luke’s Lobster that focus all of their attention on preparing and serving one type of dish. The New York Magazine coins the term SSR – Single Serving Restaurants for this spreading phenomena. They note that opening such a restaurant confers several advantages in an industry full of risks and dangers. They include:

  • Restaurants make money by adding value to raw ingredients. It’s easier to do this if you constrain yourself to a few key dishes.
  • People automatically assume that the restaurant is extremely good at preparing the one dish it promises to serve and so are more likely to visit it.
  • Buying the same few ingredients in bulk lowers prices. It also means that less food has to be thrown away because it has passed its expiry date since you’re more likely to use all your ingredients if you only use a few to make each dish in the first place.
  • It’s easier to expand your chain if your menu is simple.
  • It seems the key to success is to sell traditional comfort foods.

To read more about the superiority of SSRs when compared to traditional restaurants as well as the experience of other SSR chains click here.

Source: New York Magazine

Via: Newmark’s Door

Comments Off on Starting a Restaurant? The Key to Success!

The Hospitals of the Super Rich

9:00 am in Daily Bulletin

The New York Times reported on Luxury Hospitals that cater exclusively to the super rich. Some of the fascinating points made in the article include:

  • Luxuries in these hospital ‘rooms’ include a personal butler, a decadent menu (that includes things such as Gelato Ice Cream), linen designed for royalty, marble bathrooms, and, panoramic windows.
  • Such hotel suites can cost anywhere between $1000 to $2400+ a day. Foreigners may be charged an additional $4,500 per day. One such luxury hospital estimates that 30% of their clients come from abroad.
  • The profits can be lucrative. One hospital owner estimated that the luxury wing brings in $3.5 million a year.

To read about the Saudi King who needed even more than these ‘standard’ luxuries as well as some of the celebrities that have benefited from such facilities, click here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Salon

Comments Off on The Hospitals of the Super Rich

Pizza Topping Markup Calculator

12:23 pm in Editorial, Top

Centives decided to take a look at the mark-up on the toppings for a pizza. Read the rest of this entry →

4 Comments »

The Economics of the McRib

9:00 am in Daily Bulletin

Why does McDonalds keep reintroducing the McRib sandwich? THE AWL has a theory. They argue that McDonalds brings them back when global prices for pork are low, meaning that profits from the sandwich can be maximized.

The article is quite long and examines the details of the sandwich and counter-theories that explain why the sandwich’s presence on the McDonalds menu is so unreliable. Read it here.

Source: THE AWL

Via: Freakonomics

Comments Off on The Economics of the McRib

Buying the Real Steel Robots in 2011

9:00 am in Editorial, Top

2011 film Real Steel takes place in a not so distant future where human boxers have faded away to be replaced by robotic brawlers. The most striking thing about the film is the technological sophistication of the mechanical fighters in a movie that is set just ten years into the future. Centives decided to find out how much the androids would cost in today’s dollars, and then figured out the equivalent car that you could buy for the same amount of money in the present.

Current expectations for the Read the rest of this entry →

Comments Off on Buying the Real Steel Robots in 2011

Next Entries →

Search

Random entries

  • It Costs $1 Billion To Move A Town Of 18,000 Three Kilometers To The Right
  • Shop Till You Drop
  • What does it take to be an Orchestra Conductor?
  • How Weddings Have Changed
  • Why A Gun Conspiracy Is Helping The US Economy

Stay in Touch

Twitter

Facebook

Email

RSS Centives RSS

  • Surge Pricing Comes To The Restaurant Industry
  • People Are Using Ubers Instead Of Ambulances
  • Why Have A President When You Can Have A Monarch?
  • The Economics Of A Las Vegas Residency
  • Silicon Valley Companies Are So Full Of Men, Women Had To Be Hired For The Holiday Parties
  • What Office Chairs Say About Our World
  • There Are Olympics For Valets
  • Eliminating The Penny Could Hurt The Poor

Join the Discussion! (No Signup Required)

  • Brian Morgan on Advanced Monopoly Property Value Calculator
  • Anonymous on Is Batman Keeping Gotham City Poor?
  • fish on Forrest Gump’s Running Route
  • Anonymous on How Much Does It Cost To Host The Hunger Games?
  • Rora on How Much Would It Cost To Build The Death Star?

Please Support Our Sponsors

What We Read

  • Cracked
  • Freakonomics
  • Marginal Revolution
  • Newmark's Door
  • Salon
  • Slate
  • The Economist
  • Wired

Categories

  • Announcement
  • Daily Bulletin
  • Editorial
  • Signature
  • Snips
  • Top

It would help us immensely if you checked out their products:



Centives is proudly powered by WordPress and BuddyPress. Just another WordPress Theme developed by Themekraft.
  • Camisetas de fútbol
  • cheap nfl jerseys
  • cheap jerseys from china
  • cheap nhl jerseys