These 15 Restaurant Rip-Offs Will Make You Think Twice About Eating Out

Some restaurants make money in the wildest ways, and sometimes it feels like we’re being taken advantage of. Tiny portions with big price tags, fancy “exclusive” water, or extra charges for things that should be free — like bread or sauce. Here are 16 smart but weird ways some restaurants make extra money.

• 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
• 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
• Most of our desserts are purchased from the Wal-Mart directly across the street then marked up 500%. For the price of a couple of pieces of cheesecake, you could just go across the street to Wal-Mart after your meal and buy a whole one. We just drizzle a bit of chocolate or raspberry sauce on it so that it doesn’t look exactly like the one from Wal-Mart. Also, a smoker outside the building doesn’t mean your barbecue is fresh. Most of it is frozen. Sometimes we just throw logs on there so it looks and smells like we’re barbecuing. Homey, we made that shit two days ago. That’s just wood you’re smelling. @Unknown author / Reddit

• Not really a rip-off, but there’s an Italian place nearby that serves a deliciously savory dipping sauce. $13 gets you about an 8 oz crock of it and 6 soft breadsticks to dip. I googled it and it’s just melted butter with anchovies and a little sour cream melded in. I made a fondue pot of it for New Year’s Eve. Super easy, inexpensive, and impressed the hell out of our guests. @SuzQP / 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

• 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
• I used to cook at a seafood restaurant and without a doubt, it was the lobster rolls. We used hardly any filler in them, basically all lobster and I still couldn’t believe what we were selling them for. @Kwax44 / Reddit
• I once worked in the kitchen for 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
• Short-rib flatbread pizza. We take a leftover short rib from the previous night, shred it, put it on $0.05 worth of flatbread with a sprinkle of cheese and some diced red onion, and ship it 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
• 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

Food priorities are different for everyone. Some people care most about taste, while others focus on health. Some want quick and easy meals, while others enjoy spending time cooking. Some choose organic and local food, and some just go for what’s affordable. But no one wants to pay money for nothing at restaurants — we all want value for what we spend.