The extra dollars for appetizers and entrees at more expensive restaurants amount in some sense to a rental charge for a table that's guaranteed and that can be occupied longer.
If you assume the resulting fees generated for investment bankers, lawyers, accountants, printers and restaurants amount to 5% of purchase prices, the business of buying and selling companies accounted for 1% of the economy last year.
With its tucked-away setting on a short West Village street, its understated décor and a cautious list of entrees (hanger steak, skate wing, roasted chicken) that could have evolved from some protein focus group, this restaurant amounts to a repudiation of flashy packaging and trumped-up drama.
Grubwithus helps the restaurant coordinate the menu for the group for the night and then charges a service fee to the restaurant; the amount varies by meal.
Meals in Bali, even at upscale restaurants, seldom amounted to more than $3 or $4 at the prevailing rates of exchange -- which were becoming more favorable every day.
Typically, she told me, she spends about $250 a week eating in good restaurants, which amounts to about $13,000 annually, and this does not include the additional $50 to $100 a week she spends on cooking classes, wine tastings and cheese pairings.
He has a friendlier vision, which in a certain sector of the restaurant world amounts to a radical one.
It tracks annual growth plans for major retailers and restaurants, and the amount of space retailers say they will add this year has risen 40 percent from this time last year.
Chris Moyer, who manages Conserve, the environmental program of the National Restaurant Association, said the number of restaurants and the amount of money invested in going green had steadily risen over the past few years.
However, other restaurants increased the amount of sodium on average in items on the menu in both years.
Fred Sampson, the president of the New York State Restaurant Association, said the total restaurant business citywide amounted to between $6.5 billion and $6.7 billion annually; the lunchtime takeout business on Wall Street alone, he said, "must be staggering". On the Upper West Side yesterday, the business potential was reflected in enthusiasm for the delivery of fast food.
