tim's experiment

Actually the full name is Ruby Tuesday, named after a song with which fellow fossils will be familiar, and there is no Ruby, as far as I know. The restaurant chain has a few outlets in Hong Kong. One of the little mysteries of the local restaurant business is how it keeps going. There is nothing wrong with the food, and there are always plenty of customers, but the frequent flier benefits are amazing. For a small fee they will sell you card with which, for a year, you can eat at half price.  There are bonus points as well, though my family does not have the size or the appetite to qualify for them.

Still, the basic deal is spectacular. No, the regular prices are not outrageous. Nor is this a temporary expedient designed to get people to try the place. It has been going on for years. Recently they introduced a more expensive version of the card with which you can drink alcoholic drinks at half price as well. Needless to say local residents who go there tend to be equipped with the card. Indeed I am told that the children of the 80s turn up there in great shoals, but only if someone in the party qualifies for the discount.

The interesting thing is that this seems to defy the basic laws of restaurant economics, which state, or they did when I was covering such matters regularly, that only a quarter of what you pay goes on food. About half goes on fixed overheads and the rest is wages and, with luck, profit. Of course this wild generalisation conceals some odd wrinkles – the margin on tea and coffee, for example, is generally much higher, and wine, if you sell it, is a goldmine. But you rarely see anyone drinking alcohol in Ruby’s. So there is obviously something ingenious going on.

This is not going to turn into a food blog but Ruby is worth a try. The weekday set lunch is not covered by the discount scheme so you can experiment without the nagging feeling that everyone else in the place is paying half as much.