Science helps bars, eateries improve your experience

You're going to get hungry reading today's column. Let's start with a university study about M&Ms, as recounted by Jon Taffer, star of Spike TV's "Bar Rescue."

"If I take M&Ms and separate them by color - and put yellow ones, and blue ones, and green ones in separate bowls - and then I let 20 people in a test group come in, they'll eat whatever amount they'll eat.

"But," Taffer says, "if I don't separate them by color - put all of the bowls out in assorted colors - they'll consume 28 percent more M&Ms."

That is totally weird. Now how is that M&M study useful to restaurants and bars?

Taffer says chefs can use that M&M discovery to sell assorted plates.

"If you order the 12-wing platter, you get three flavors. Asian chefs have been doing trios of flavors for years," he says.

Taffer says he knows thousands of these little consumption nuggets, and he will impart such insights to people who pay $300 to $350 to see him and others speak from 1 to 6:30 p.m. at today's "Rescue Tour" seminar at Treasure Island. (NCBrescuetour.com and JonTaffer.com.)

Another nugget: "Almost 70 percent of people when they walk into a mall make a right-hand turn."

But Taffer says if a mall pours light on the hallway to the left, then people will start to turn to the left instead, according to research.

"I can buck that science with light - only with light. No signage or anything else will change it," he says.

"These human characteristics and behavior elements are fascinating."

Taffer is not just a bar and restaurant consultant, he is president of the Nightclub & Bar Media Group, producing the Nightclub & Bar Convention and Trade Show on March 19-21 in Las Vegas.

He has won several "operator of the year" awards. He's in the Nightclub Hall of Fame. And he is an officially designated "pub master" in England. He just moved from Florida to Vegas this fall.

He began his consumer education in college, studying cultural anthropology and the socialization of species, he says. He reads sociological books voraciously and conducts his own experiments with eaters.

"I'm a nutcase: I test everything. I put laser tracking on eyes. I've put infrared temperature sensors in rooms, and I'll check people's body temperatures during music programs and certain activities."

On his TV show and in seminars, he tries to change the way bar and restaurant people think, not just how they act, by teaching his approach called "reaction management."

"For example, every cook in the kitchen thinks he's making an entree, and he's not," Taffer says.

"When that plate of food hits the table, one of two things happens. Either you sit up and react to it - looking at your plate, looking at your friends, looking back and forth - or nothing happens.

"If that plate hits that table, and you don't sit up, I profess that restaurant or bar is stuck in mediocrity for the rest of its life."

So cooks and chefs are making more than an entree. They're making a human reaction, he says. The best restaurants perfect every detail - from lights, music and temperature to how high a server holds a plate.

Even the science of beats-per-minute in an overhead song can alter customer dynamics. If the BPM is too fast, people burn out quick. If the BPM is too low, they're bored.

"I can slow your eardrum down and still make the music sound exactly the same, and increase your length of stay, because I've reduced fatigue to your eardrum without changing the volume."

Taffer is talking about not just high-end restaurants on the Strip, but suburban and family bars that serve food.

"How do you put out food that has culinary credibility when the greatest asset you have in the kitchen is a guy who makes $12 an hour who's worked on the line for three months?" he says.

All this science serves one master: pleasure.

"How do I get you to eat more, smile more, make more friends, dance more? That's the trick. How do I make you have more fun than you would normally have on your own?

"If I can accomplish that, I own you."

Doug Elfman's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Email him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.