Locally, the Barbecue Distribution Problem. Globally, the Efficiency Problem. Imagine Franklin Barbecue as one of the broken windows of inefficiency; yes, it only wastes tens of years per year, and they’re probably only losing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue per year. But efficient markets in barbecue help make efficient markets in other things more reasonable.
I would assume that people who run the barbecue are (1) Aware of the problem; (2) Have incentives to deal with it; and (3) Are not entirely stupid. Given this I am not sure why do you think that what they are doing now is not “the right answer”. For example, raising prices might be good in the short term but turn out to be a very bad idea in the medium term.
Globally, the Efficiency Problem.
What is that problem and, again, what does it have to do with temporary shortages of high-status goods? And I’m less than convinced that the broken-windows theory applies to global efficiency. In any case, if so, wouldn’t you want to start with government, instead? X-/
To give a trivial example, creating such a temporary shortage is popular marketing trick (if the company can pull it off, of course).
I would assume that people who run the barbecue are (1) Aware of the problem; (2) Have incentives to deal with it; and (3) Are not entirely stupid. Given this I am not sure why do you think that what they are doing now is not “the right answer”.
I think that (3) is not a good assumption to make, and I wouldn’t word it that way. I know lots of artists who have never heard of sealed second-bid auctions (also known as Vickrey auctions), despite those auctions being the optimal way to sell artwork or commission slots online. Are they entirely stupid? No; they just have limited knowledge. Similarly, the barbecue auction problem has a potentially nontrivial complication: there are 5 different varieties of meat sold by the pound (and each variety of meat can either go into by-the-pound orders or sandwich or plate orders), and many people would like either their entire order, or none of their order. How do you find the optimal set of orders to fulfill, and what price do you charge people for those orders, in a way that doesn’t skew their bidding incentives?
It’s a solvable problem, of course, but it’s the sort of problem you’d want to hand off to an optimization guy to solve for you, especially if your core competency is barbecuing meat.
For example, raising prices might be good in the short term but turn out to be a very bad idea in the medium term.
It might- it’s possible that once people could get it by paying more money, instead of more time, it would lose some of the specialness and people would go there less. But it’s not clear to me that they would ever reach the point where they don’t sell out of meat, and maybe they have to be open for dinner too instead of just lunch.
But it could also be that the steady-state long-term price of their brisket is $40 a pound, and they’ve been selling it at $17, and that it is a fantastic thing over the medium term.
(Also, I feel I should mention, since it may not have been obvious: they do allow pre-orders, if you’re willing to pre-order by about a month. The amount of pre-orders they allow is obviously capped, so that there’s still BBQ available day-of. Auctioning off meat should start as a small percentage of their total quantity moved as a test, and then expanded or contracted as desired. So long as some of it is available by waiting, it is unlikely to lose the popularity.)
What is that problem and, again, what does it have to do with temporary shortages of high-status goods?
Basically, not enough people thinking like economists.
Well, then, I see an excellent opportunity for you. You mentioned that they might be “losing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue per year”—surely if you go talk to them and point it out, they’ll be glad to pay you some of that surplus that they are leaving on the table.
In the best case you’ll earn a fair chunk of money and make friends in the BBQ business. In the worst case you’ll learn a valuable lesson why theoretical economics doesn’t apply to real life too well :-)
Basically, not enough people thinking like economists.
That’s complicated. I understand what you are trying to say, but “thinking like an economist” is not an unalloyed good. For example, consider that economics (especially macro) is really bad at forecasting.
If the availability of their product to low-income people is a priority for the current owner, it might be possible to maintain that while raising cash prices by offering menial temp work (such as dishwashing) in exchange for store credit. This is a well-known strategy among restaurants looking to settle accounts with someone who has already eaten but proves unable to pay; the innovative part would be offering a more favorable rate of exchange, and work first for food later.
If jobs are scarce, the restaurant should already have enough dishwashers. Since the restaurant can’t temporarily fire one of its existing dishwashers for a week in order to have the nonpaying customer wash dishes, it’s hard for the restaurant to recover the money in free labor from the customer. It only works if the restaurant happens to have a job of the right length available I’d expect that to be pretty unlikely. Better just call the police. As a bonus, if you call the police you don’t create perverse incentives for more people to stiff you on the bill in the future.
I realize your version of the story doesn’t include this, but I’ve often heard it as the restaurant giving the guy a permanent dishwashing job, and sometimes even having the guy rise up in rank and eventually come to own the restaurant. This version is even unlikelier. (For instance, if the restaurant thinks a guy hired this way is better than a guy hired through the normal application process, why do they even have an application process? And if you’re in a situation where jobs are scarce, then jobs are valuable things and the restaurant should be able to be very selective in who it hires.)
Of course it’s less efficient than hiring an equivalent number of professional dishwashers; the point is to extract more value from the customers by having them choose between paying extra or doing marginally useful work, rather than standing in line.
I realize your version of the story doesn’t include this, but I’ve often heard it as the restaurant giving the guy a permanent dishwashing job, and sometimes even having the guy rise up in rank and eventually come to own the restaurant. This version is even unlikelier. (For instance, if the restaurant thinks a guy hired this way is better than a guy hired through the normal application process, why do they even have an application process? And if you’re in a situation where jobs are scarce, then jobs are valuable things and the restaurant should be able to be very selective in who it hires.)
I can’t speak to whether there are any real instances of such a thing happening (the story is only vaguely familiar, I may not even have heard it before,) and I suspect it’s more likely than not apocryphal. But the answer to “if the restaurant thinks a guy hired this way is better than a guy hired through the normal application process, why do they even have an application process?” would be “because a single specimen does not invalidate a selection process that deals in generalities.” The application process is an attempt at sorting prospective workers to select those who are most likely to be valuable to your business, but that’s not to say either that some duds won’t get through (people routinely make it through application processes only to be fired for poor performance, after all,) or that a less stringent selection process cannot induct good workers.
Locally, the Barbecue Distribution Problem. Globally, the Efficiency Problem. Imagine Franklin Barbecue as one of the broken windows of inefficiency; yes, it only wastes tens of years per year, and they’re probably only losing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue per year. But efficient markets in barbecue help make efficient markets in other things more reasonable.
I would assume that people who run the barbecue are (1) Aware of the problem; (2) Have incentives to deal with it; and (3) Are not entirely stupid. Given this I am not sure why do you think that what they are doing now is not “the right answer”. For example, raising prices might be good in the short term but turn out to be a very bad idea in the medium term.
What is that problem and, again, what does it have to do with temporary shortages of high-status goods? And I’m less than convinced that the broken-windows theory applies to global efficiency. In any case, if so, wouldn’t you want to start with government, instead? X-/
To give a trivial example, creating such a temporary shortage is popular marketing trick (if the company can pull it off, of course).
I think that (3) is not a good assumption to make, and I wouldn’t word it that way. I know lots of artists who have never heard of sealed second-bid auctions (also known as Vickrey auctions), despite those auctions being the optimal way to sell artwork or commission slots online. Are they entirely stupid? No; they just have limited knowledge. Similarly, the barbecue auction problem has a potentially nontrivial complication: there are 5 different varieties of meat sold by the pound (and each variety of meat can either go into by-the-pound orders or sandwich or plate orders), and many people would like either their entire order, or none of their order. How do you find the optimal set of orders to fulfill, and what price do you charge people for those orders, in a way that doesn’t skew their bidding incentives?
It’s a solvable problem, of course, but it’s the sort of problem you’d want to hand off to an optimization guy to solve for you, especially if your core competency is barbecuing meat.
It might- it’s possible that once people could get it by paying more money, instead of more time, it would lose some of the specialness and people would go there less. But it’s not clear to me that they would ever reach the point where they don’t sell out of meat, and maybe they have to be open for dinner too instead of just lunch.
But it could also be that the steady-state long-term price of their brisket is $40 a pound, and they’ve been selling it at $17, and that it is a fantastic thing over the medium term.
(Also, I feel I should mention, since it may not have been obvious: they do allow pre-orders, if you’re willing to pre-order by about a month. The amount of pre-orders they allow is obviously capped, so that there’s still BBQ available day-of. Auctioning off meat should start as a small percentage of their total quantity moved as a test, and then expanded or contracted as desired. So long as some of it is available by waiting, it is unlikely to lose the popularity.)
Basically, not enough people thinking like economists.
Well, then, I see an excellent opportunity for you. You mentioned that they might be “losing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue per year”—surely if you go talk to them and point it out, they’ll be glad to pay you some of that surplus that they are leaving on the table.
In the best case you’ll earn a fair chunk of money and make friends in the BBQ business. In the worst case you’ll learn a valuable lesson why theoretical economics doesn’t apply to real life too well :-)
That’s complicated. I understand what you are trying to say, but “thinking like an economist” is not an unalloyed good. For example, consider that economics (especially macro) is really bad at forecasting.
This is, in fact, my plan.
Cool!
Do report on success.
If the availability of their product to low-income people is a priority for the current owner, it might be possible to maintain that while raising cash prices by offering menial temp work (such as dishwashing) in exchange for store credit. This is a well-known strategy among restaurants looking to settle accounts with someone who has already eaten but proves unable to pay; the innovative part would be offering a more favorable rate of exchange, and work first for food later.
If jobs are scarce, the restaurant should already have enough dishwashers. Since the restaurant can’t temporarily fire one of its existing dishwashers for a week in order to have the nonpaying customer wash dishes, it’s hard for the restaurant to recover the money in free labor from the customer. It only works if the restaurant happens to have a job of the right length available I’d expect that to be pretty unlikely. Better just call the police. As a bonus, if you call the police you don’t create perverse incentives for more people to stiff you on the bill in the future.
I realize your version of the story doesn’t include this, but I’ve often heard it as the restaurant giving the guy a permanent dishwashing job, and sometimes even having the guy rise up in rank and eventually come to own the restaurant. This version is even unlikelier. (For instance, if the restaurant thinks a guy hired this way is better than a guy hired through the normal application process, why do they even have an application process? And if you’re in a situation where jobs are scarce, then jobs are valuable things and the restaurant should be able to be very selective in who it hires.)
Of course it’s less efficient than hiring an equivalent number of professional dishwashers; the point is to extract more value from the customers by having them choose between paying extra or doing marginally useful work, rather than standing in line.
I can’t speak to whether there are any real instances of such a thing happening (the story is only vaguely familiar, I may not even have heard it before,) and I suspect it’s more likely than not apocryphal. But the answer to “if the restaurant thinks a guy hired this way is better than a guy hired through the normal application process, why do they even have an application process?” would be “because a single specimen does not invalidate a selection process that deals in generalities.” The application process is an attempt at sorting prospective workers to select those who are most likely to be valuable to your business, but that’s not to say either that some duds won’t get through (people routinely make it through application processes only to be fired for poor performance, after all,) or that a less stringent selection process cannot induct good workers.