16 Biggest Restaurant Rip-Offs That Might Anger You / Bright Side

Have you ever wondered why many restaurants try to push add-ons on us? All these extra sauces, side dishes, and extras may be cheap, but if you realize how little they cost, you will stop ordering them. Let’s see 16 smart ways restaurants make a lot of extra money while spending only a fraction of that to buy. You will be amazed how many times you may have fallen victim to these practices.

• Not a chef but a baker. Cake balls. They’re maybe 1 inch by 1 inch (rolled in a ball and dipped in icing) but we sell them for $1.65 each.
  We sell a quarter sheet cake (the most common size) for $20. We sell 1 dozen cake balls, which is maybe 1/3 of the cake, for $19.8. @Unknown author / Reddit
• Short-rib flatbread pizza. We take leftover short ribs from the previous night, shred them, put them on $0.05 worth of flatbread with a sprinkle of cheese and some diced red onion, and ship them out for $11.45. It’s literally $10 profit.
  And people love it. We sell easily 20-25 every night as hot apps. @cde34rfv / Reddit
• We had “homemade flan” on the menu. It was frozen. I sold so much of that. I concocted an entire backstory for the recipe that led to this amazing piece of freezer reject arriving on the customer’s (plastic) plate.
  There was a guy in the kitchen from a ranch in Mexico. He really loved his grandmother. He was a bit touched, but a sweet guy. I went with it.
  Voilà, it was his grandmother’s recipe with varying detail flair. Sometimes she milked her own cows, grew her own sugar cane, etc. @Brutusismyhomeboy / Reddit

• We have a dessert, homemade donut holes, tossed in sugar and drizzled with Nutella for $10. It’s leftover pizza dough deep-fried. A 45lb bag of flour is $18, so you do the math. It tastes amazing! @johnnyloves*** / Reddit
• Sushi chef. Cucumber or avocado rolls. Less than a handful of rice, one-half sheet of nori, and about 1/4 of an avocado or its equivalent in cucumber. No idea why anyone gets these, the spicy vegetable roll is dope. @Kumacon / Reddit
• Cheesecake factory worker here. We sell slices for $8 a slice, and they cost us $1. You’re getting ripped off. Our apple crisp is frozen and microwaved.
  If you get a cheesecake togo like a slice, there’s an 80% chance it’s broken, and we know you won’t say anything. Also, if there’s a large amount of whipped cream with your cheesecake, it’s probably there to cover up mistakes. @Xboxben / Reddit

• My ex used to work at Applebees. She told me that everything you eat there is pre-packaged and just microwaved once you order it, including the ribs and steak. @ChizzMiss / Reddit
• $12 for a liter of still water, purely because it’s ‘authentic Italian.’ $3.50 for a soft drink that we have on tap and costs us nothing at all compared to the amount we get from sales – the only exceptions to this are things like Diet Coke or Pepsi Max. @naddlenoodle / Reddit
• Pork is a fairly cheap meat, and pork chops are a fairly cheap cut. For a 10oz chop, it costs us about $3.50. We sell it for $24.
  Selling two orders pays for the whole order of chops as well as everything else that comes with it (sauce, mash, vegetable, etc.). If you want to support a restaurant, buy the pork chops. @Fetusal / Reddit

• Avocado Toast. Like, wow! It’s cheap bread. Cheap toppings. A cheap dressing.
  The only thing that costs is the avocados themselves. But the entire dish is like $20. The margin is easily a solid 13–15 dollars, depending on the season. And people eat that a lot. @Sniffygull / Reddit
• I worked in a big fancy restaurant. Makes about 20k a day. They microwave everything.
  Fresh steamed veggies? Nuked. Warm pie? Microwaved. Everything they can, they microwave. @Unknown author / Reddit
• Shrimp – We buy them 40 per lb @ $10 and sell 4 pcs with a shot glass of cocktail sauce for $12. Basically, we turn $10 into $120 every half hour.
  Pasta – We buy pasta by the ton and essentially turn 0.30 worth of pasta and 0.60 worth of sauce into $18 per plate. @WiggleW*** / Reddit
• I once worked in the kitchen for a Whole Foods. They sell “homemade chips” where we just cut and fry corn tortillas. My boss told me those alone keep our store afloat more than anything else.
  1 box of tortillas: $20. One box made like 80–100 bags of chips, all sold for $6-$10 a bag. Boss literally told me, “I don’t know what the profit margin is, but it’s such a big number it’s not worth calculating.” @ZeusHatesTrees / Reddit

• My husband used to work in a gastro-pub in a well-to-do area where it was the only option. The baked Camembert. It was literally the Camembert from Aldi. £1 each. Baked and sold for £15 to share. @Thraell / Reddit
• MAYONNAISE. We bought it for €12.50 (that’s $15) and we served it in these small cute dishes/trays for €0.50. We could do almost 500 of these servings. That is €250 ($300). That’s 20 times the original value. @Ronnylicious / Reddit
• I worked in a fancy country club ($25K initiation fee, then $7K/year in the 90s). A slice of “homemade” cheesecake was $7 each on the menu. One of the sous chefs stopped by the Giant Food grocery store every day on the way to work to pick up a whole cheesecake for about $5. @twopacktuesday / Reddit

Do you want to know even more about food industry secrets that will make you feel deceived? After reading about all this information, we bet your food orders from now on will be much different.