Sunday, August 26, 2007

Pricing Power of Baltimore Restaurants

I want to begin this post with two stylized facts about Baltimore restaurants relative to other cities.
1. On average, nice Baltimore restaurants are more expensive than comparable restaurants in other cities.
2. On average, nice Baltimore restaurants are easier to get into (a.k.a. emptier) than comparable restaurants in other cities.

These two observations seem pretty clear to me after just a few months in Baltimore (and having spent lots of time in more than a few major cities for comparison). I'm going to use them as the starting point for this discussion, but I welcome thoughts on either point. If either of these is wrong, my theory (which attempts to explain them) is probably wrong too.

Can we explain these two facts with a single unified explanation? Why doesn't a restaurant cut prices to get fuller? Given the fixed costs of running a restaurant, this would certainly be worth doing if a small price cut would substantially increase the number of customers. The fact that we don't see much of this (judging by the high prices and empty restaurants) implies that in Baltimore you wouldn't get a big increase in customers with a small decrease in price. In other cities, you see lower prices and fuller restaurants because empty restaurants can increase their number of customers more dramatically with small price drops. In other words, Baltimore's restaurant patrons have a more inelastic demand for a given restaurant than patrons in other cities.

Why are Baltimore restaurant patrons more inelastic demanders of dinners than patrons in other cities? The obvious answer here is that larger and richer cities have room in their markets for more nice restaurants of any given type and therefore more competition. The Baltimore restaurant market is less competitive and "thinner" so restaurant owners have more pricing power. Thai Restaurant in Waverly charges much higher prices than similar restaurants elsewhere because you have to Mount Vernon (and arguably to the DC suburbs) to get good Thai food nearby. I'm willing to pay $3 to avoid this commute, and Waverly doesn't have a big enough market to support two Thai restaurants. Therefore, the one Thai restaurant can raise prices a bit knowing our other options are limited.

9 comments:

Bill Mill said...

I haven't tried Thai Restaurant, but I frequently eat at, and love, Thai Arroy in Fed Hill. Entrees are cheap, and the food is very good.

Anonymous said...

are you intentionally being a provocateur? you're aware that the best thing this city's got going for it (according to the readers of CityPaper year after year) is that it's cheap, right?

seriously, can we see just a lil data to back that claim up? maybe a confounding factor is daily specials - bmore restaurants seem especially big on these compared to peer city places, to me at least

rd

Marginal Foodie said...

Dear rd,

No, I'm not trying to be provocative at all. This is my honest assessment, but perhaps I should qualify it a bit more. I think that Baltimore may well have lots of good cheap eats (though not Asian ones). However, more upscale restaurants ($20 entrees elsewhere become $25 entrees in Baltimore) and "ethnic" restaurants (particularly Asian ones) are much more expensive that their counterparts in other towns. I put the gap at 20-25%, but I readily agree that this is more "eyeballing" than anything else.

Compare Saigon Remembered in Baltimore (which has $12 bun and $6 spring rolls) with Nam Phuong in Philadelphia (www.namphuongphilly.com, which has $3 spring rolls and $7-$9 bun). You'll have to trust me when I say that food quality and decor are similar, or go check it out. I can give you as many of these examples as you want in pretty much any kind of Asian food (save perhaps sushi, which seems like a competitive market in Baltimore for some reason) or with any kind of restaurant in the yuppie/new American/eclectic space.

Anonymous said...

I'm still not completely convinced.. Nam Phuong sounds like a place that extends the national frontier, which is unfair to compare to.
I doubt the avg baltimore restaurant is expensive (controlling for quality, etc) compared to a peer in philly or some other big east coast city. now, that would imply bmore restaurants are relatively expensive for bmore - since the cost of living in general is lower here. so maybe you're just expecting restaurants to be dirt cheap here and when they're not they seem expensive to you..

And again, dont forget the specials. $25 for 2 orders of fajitas and a pitcher of margaritas at Nacho Mamas Sun-Tues

rd

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