Why Show Customers How Much Better They Could Do?

As a connoisseur of junky pizza places, I feel positioned to make this claim: An inordinate amount of cheap eating places leave televisions on at loud volumes during all hours. The televisions are not big enough to see the picture clearly. And most oddly, they are tuned to cooking shows.

I don’t understand this. Perhaps it is because the short order cook has dreams of being a real chef and likes to watch the set. Perhaps the managers think it’s a good fit – people come there to eat, people watch shows about eating, QED. However, you are serving crappy food. Having a cooking show only contrasts your experience with high end aspirational dining experiences. It just accentuates how bad you are.

2 thoughts on “Why Show Customers How Much Better They Could Do?”

  1. I’ll venture two guesses:

    1) Looking at food makes you hungry, and looking at food at a place that sells food perhaps makes you more likely to buy food, even if it is gross compared to what you are seeing on TV.

    2) It can be left on all day without concern that something inappropriate will come on. Other channels might be perfectly family-friendly at 11:00am when the shop opens, but hours later when “Two and a Half Men” comes on while Mom and her seven year old are waiting for their pizza, it could result in an unhappy customer. What pizza shop owner wants to spend their day worrying about changing the station at various times when they’re busy running a restaurant? Turn on the Food Network, and you can forget about the TV for the rest of the day.

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