Capitalism Cafe: Where there’s no such thing as a free lunch

Posted on November 21, 2007
Filed Under Business & Entrepreneurship, Finance & Economics, Ideas |

When I was in college I had a great idea for a supply and demand based restaurant concept. I’m sure I’m not the first one to come up with the idea, but I haven’t ever seen or heard of anything like this.

Imagine this:

You’re an investment banker in New York City or London and you need a place to go for a quick bite to eat and a client meeting. You walk into Capitalism Café (where there’s no such thing as a free lunch), and you are presented with an electronic menu showing the items of the day and their current prices. You now have two choices.

1. What do you want to eat?
2. When do you want to pay?

If you come in before the lunch rush, and you pick a menu item that isn’t particularly popular during the lunch rush, then the price will go down and you should pay after you are finished eating.

If, on the other hand, you choose to pay after you eat and whatever you ordered was particularly popular among customers that day, then the price will go up and you will now have to pay more for the same meal.

Quite simply this is just a restaurant that has some fun with the dynamics of supply and demand.

Of course, it would probably make sense to do this in a market where your customers actually understand these dynamics, such as NYC or London. And, given the market’s demand profile in those places, it would also probably make sense to make this an upscale, moderately expensive place to eat.

You could keep people coming back with an endless number of side games customers could play. A lot of forecasting games come to mind as well as a number of ways to ‘hedge’ your bets. Not to mention this would make it both easy and fun for groups to decide on who pays.

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