All you can eat economics

0:00Support comes from our 2025 lead sponsor of Planet Money, Amazon Ads. Less than half of customers fully trust their financial institutions. Amazon Ads helps financial brands build that trust through relevant ads using first-party signals to reach the right customers. More at advertising.amazon.com. This is Planet Money from NPR. A few weeks ago, we went to Vegas. We rode a roller coaster that went through a hotel. This is terrifying. You're terrified. That guy's not terrified. That guy's not terrified. That guy is ready. We gambled. We played the penny slots. Here we go. Oh! Oh my god, we got something.

0:49Holy crap. We just won. We won a dollar. We won a dollar? And 20 cents. Do it again. See what happens. But the real reason we went to Vegas was because Vegas is home to some of the biggest, most extravagant, all-you-can-eat buffets in the world. Oh, this is it here? No, it's way over there. Oh, it's over there. Okay. This might be the longest line I've seen since we've been here. So we're here at the Caesar's Palace Buffet. The name for it is called the Bacchanal. Yes, that is its real name. They are not playing around here. There is like this shiny metal-plated rope. There are bouncers. There's this huge line of people waiting to get in.

1:31it feels like an exclusive nightclub. But luckily, we are here with a buffet insider. Wow! How are you? How are you? Nice to see you. We have a reservation at 7 o 'clock. Brian Merzen knows the ins and outs and finances of one of the biggest buffets on the Strip. He ran things at the Bacchanal for years, so that fancy rope, it comes up for us. We get to skip the line. You're on a VIP. Look at that. Look at this. How you doing? Brian tells us buffets used to be this amenity that casinos offered to keep gamblers gambling. It was cheap and easy food. But not anymore. When we get inside the Bacchanal, we see that this is not cheap food.

2:18The first thing we come across? An entire island of seafood. Yeah, you have some prawns. You have welts. You have lobster claws. You have crab legs, shrimp cocktail, dungeness crab. You have some clams. It's not just lobsters, crabs, and clams. It is like piles and piles. And it's also different types of crab and different types of clams. I've never even heard of a Cortez clam. Here, let's grab a plate. Brian leads us around the corner, and we see a prime rib carving station. A section devoted to dim sum. There's even a whole roasted pig. It feels like a buffet amusement park. It feels like, what ride am I going to get on?

3:04I want to do the mall. How do I pace myself? We've come to a buffet. Because here at Planet Money, we believe buffets are not just a place to gorge yourself on food. They're also a place to gorge yourself on economics. Yeah, buffets are like this special place where all kinds of interesting economic phenomena that you might have only read about in a textbook, they come alive. And while we were with this buffet insider, we had to ask one of our burning questions. Is it possible to eat your money's worth? Is it possible to beat the buffet? People will never, they'll never beat us. You're telling me the house always wins.

3:48House always goes. Even in the buffet. Absolutely. Okay, well, I guess we'll see. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Jeff Guo. And I'm Erica Barris. We are hitting the buffet in Las Vegas, and we have a challenge. We're going to spot all of the economics happening at the all-you-can-eat buffet. Because nestled between the lechon dipping sauce and the beef steamship and the salmon risotto, there's a lot of economics going on. Today on the show, it is an econ scavenger hunt. All the economics you can find, all the economics you can handle at the all-you-can-eat buffet. Also, an economist will teach us how he optimizes a perfect visit to the buffet.

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5:31Terms and conditions apply. So we are here in Las Vegas on a scavenger hunt. We're going to find and point out as many economic concepts as we can at the all-you-can-eat buffet. And to help us out, we met up with an economist who's also a buffet expert. Professor Eric! Oh, it's so good to see you! Oh, you hug her? Sorry, I'm sorry. Hi, Erica. So nice to meet you. Very nice to meet you. Eric Cheng is an economics professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. We met him outside of the South Point Casino. Eric has loved buffets for decades, since he was a college student in the 90s. So my classmates, we would go to lunch, bring our homework with us and study, and then we would stay practically for dinner.

6:16Oh my God. So the buffet was your meal plan. Yes, exactly. It was cheaper than the on-campus meal plan. And Eric says buffets were priced so cheap for a reason. Casinos back then, it was all about drawing customers into the casinos. So clearly that was the main draw. So you go in for food and then maybe you start gambling. Exactly. Yeah. This sounds like an economic concept. This sounds like a loss leader. Of course. Yes, absolutely. Is that right? Is that a point for you already? No, it's a point for us. Yeah, Erica, on Planet Money, scavenger hunts are a team sport. And right here we have our first point.

6:54Eric says all you can eat buffets started out as classic loss leaders. They were like the Black Friday doorbuster deals, something cheap to lure you in. Yeah, so according to legend, the modern all-you-can-eat buffet was born in Las Vegas in the 1940s. Some casino guy just laid out this smorgasbord of, like, meats and cheeses and let people have at it for the low, low price of one single dollar. Okay, let's go back to the main entrance here. Eric leads us through the casino through a maze of slot machines. Actually, the buffet is over here. It's midday on a Wednesday. It's not too busy. Eric comes here a lot.

7:32He actually has a special club membership. Which brings us to our second economic concept. Eric points to the sign with all the different prices for the buffet. There's a regular price and there's a... That would be us on a normal day, but today we are with a club member. Okay, so lunch is... Oh my God, lunch is$19.95, but we get a discount, so we're only paying$17.95. Lucky us. Yeah, Eric says this is an example of a common thing that economists call price discrimination, which for economists is not necessarily a bad thing. It just means charging different kinds of people, like seniors, different prices, depending on how much they're willing to pay.

8:11And there's another econ concept hiding in those buffet prices. The fact that they all end in 95 cents. It's a very common framing bias. You see it all very common in stores and gas stations. You see prices end in 99, 95. Oh, of course. Yeah, framing bias is this behavioral econ idea that people are influenced by the way information is presented to them. We've already checked off three quick and easy to spot economic concepts on our scavenger hunt. And we're just window shopping the buffet. All right, should we get our first plate of food? You lead the way. All right, I'm going to grab a plate here.

8:48We walk over to a wall of food. Basins of stir fry, troughs of pasta, mountains of deep fried everything. all these smells mixing together. It is olfactory overload. Where should we start? I like to just take a walk from one end to the other to get a sense of what you feel like eating first. Because at an all-you-can-eat buffet, you have diminishing marginal returns, right? Oh, hold on, hold on. What was that? You have diminishing marginal returns. I think that's an Econ concept. Where each additional plate gives you a little bit less satisfaction because you're getting fuller. so you really want to have your first plate being your most favorite items.

9:31And okay, this is why going to a buffet with an economist is like the best because Eric has this hyper-rational method for optimizing his buffet experience. And for this first plate, you might think that the whole buffet is your oyster, right? But Eric has this counterintuitive strategy. It's actually kind of obvious if you think about it. The first plate should be devoted to your most favorite items, The food that you know is going to make you the happiest. And so we load up our plates with some most favorite items and sit down at a red vinyl booth. Oh yeah, these scallops. Amazing. The trout is very good.

10:10As we dig into our first plate of classic buffet go-tos, we also dig into the next round of classic econ concepts. Eric starts off with the all-you-can-eat pricing model. The economics term for this is flat rate pricing, where you pay one price to use a service as much as you want. And you see flat rate pricing in a lot of places. Cell phone plans, public transit, streaming services, gyms. And one of the reasons this model works is because these industries all tend to have low marginal costs. I have like a pass to the zoo. And because I have it, I go all the time because I'm just like, I don't have to go for the whole day.

10:48I'll just go for an hour here and there. And the great part is it doesn't really cost the zoo much money to have you come more times, right? The marginal cost is relatively low. Marginal cost. I was hoping you'd say it all right. Do I get that point? Yes. High five, high five, high five. Yes. The marginal cost is low. Okay. Eric explains that the buffet has already made all these vats of food. So the marginal cost, the cost of letting in one more person to the buffet, is pretty low. Just like at the gym. They've already bought all the treadmills. Or like at the cell phone company, right? They've already paid to set up all those towers.

11:25And one reason these industries have low marginal costs is because they can take advantage of economies of scale. Like, it is cheaper to whip up a tub of mashed potatoes than to make 50 individual plates. Wait, what is that? Two different kinds of chili. Whoa. Hatch chili chili. I didn't see that. And I got this other kind of red chili. I didn't realize they had hatch green chili too. As we're wrapping up our first plates, the last classic econ concept is right in front of me. My plate is full of noodles and salad greens, not the big ticket scallops or brisket. I'm looking at our plates. I think you guys went for the priciest stuff at the buffet, really.

12:05Subsidizing your meal. Buffets in general, they're kind of like a giant game of cross subsidies. If you're with your family and you're not hungry, you're still going to come and you're still going to pay the same price as everyone else, but you're going to eat a much smaller amount. So definitely those who are not as hungry are essentially subsidizing those who are very hungry. And this kind of cross subsidization happens in a lot of industries. Like with airlines, the business class tickets are so profitable, they help subsidize the economy class tickets. Another example is credit cards. Credit card companies make a lot more money off of people who carry a balance.

12:44and those interest payments that they're paying, those help pay for everyone's points and rewards. I'm ready for round two. You ready for round two? Let's get another plate, round two. With the classic concepts of economies of scale, low marginal costs and cross subsidies in our heads, it's time for plate number two. Eric takes us on another lap around the buffet. Chicken cassoulet. Ooh. Julia Child, eat your heart out. If you want that, it may not be there by the time you come back for plate three. I think it's worth trying. I think it's worth trying. Eric says for plate number two, his buffet optimization strategy is to explore, to get out of his culinary comfort zone.

13:22This time it's trying some foods that I typically wouldn't eat, but I just get to try some things that maybe if I enjoy it next time I come, I'll have that as my first plate. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Because the cost of taking a risk at a buffet is... Zero. If I don't like it, you just don't eat it. As we sit down with our new foods, we're also going to level up on the economic concepts on our scavenger hunt. We start with a big one. It has to do with the problem that a buffet faces. If everybody kind of knows that, you know, if you eat more than the average person, you're kind of getting a deal at the buffet.

13:58If you eat less than the average person, you're kind of maybe subsidizing the people who eat more at the buffet. That's right. In the long run, wouldn't that just mean that only the people who tend to eat a lot or overeat come to the buffet? And then, like, the average price of the buffet will have to go up because the buffet will have to just start catering only to these, like, big eaters? Absolutely. You're essentially referring to the problem of adverse selection. Here's the problem of adverse selection. For people like Eric, a buffet is a really good deal. Like, he runs marathons. He is a big eater.

14:33So he goes to buffets a lot, at least once a week. And if big eaters like him go more and more, that can end up driving up the price of the buffet for everyone. One famous example of adverse selection has to do with health insurance. So here's a general idea. People who tend to need a lot of health care, like people with pre-existing conditions, they're more likely to buy health insurance. But if the system doesn't have enough healthy people to balance the costs, it might wind up in this vicious cycle where insurance premiums just get more and more expensive. Yeah, adverse selection was a huge topic of debate when Congress was passing the Affordable Care Act.

15:12Yeah, they called it the health insurance death spiral. I think it's an economics term. It's like a health economics term. OK, I'll give you that. We'll take it. We'll take it. So the next economic concept that Eric points out, OK, this one is kind of meaty. Economists have found that in a lot of cases, flat rate pricing is a bad deal. A lot of people would actually be better off avoiding all you can eat buffets or like unlimited cell phone plans. They'd actually save money by buying their food or their cell phone minutes a la carte. So it's kind of an economic mystery why so many people gravitate towards flat rate pricing.

15:52Economists call this mystery the flat rate pricing bias. And they've come up with three potential explanations. So first is the idea that people are just irrational. They overestimate how much food they're going to eat or how many cell phone minutes they're going to use in a month. And when economists do surveys of people, they find that overestimation does explain some of the bias. But it's not the whole story. Eric says there's another explanation, a more rational one. Well, in general, consumers don't like to feel like they're being nickel and dimed, right? They don't like to feel like every unit of a product they consume they're going to be charged for.

16:35And so, for example, this is often called like the taxi meter effect, where if you sit in a taxi, watching that meter tick up for every short distance that you go, or even sitting in a stoplight and seeing it just keep ticking up, it has some really awful feeling. We took a taxi to get here, and I just watched the numbers go up. And I was like, oh, when is this going to stop? Psychic disutility. And so when you come to a buffet, knowing that everything is included, where you're not going to get charged extra, the dessert is included, the drinks are included, Everything is included. That gives you the freedom to just sample and enjoy without that feeling that you have to pay more.

17:15Yeah, people are willing to pay a premium for that freedom, to avoid the pain of the taxi meter effect. And related to that is the third explanation for why people opt for flat rate pricing. It has to do with something that economists call the insurance effect, which is if you're not sure how much you want to eat or even what you want to eat, a buffet can be nice. because you know that you'll only be charged one flat rate. So flat rate pricing, it takes away the risk of an enormous bill. Economists say that people are attracted to flat rate pricing for a mix of all three of these reasons. The taximeter effect, the insurance effect, and because they sometimes overestimate how much they're actually going to consume.

17:58Professor Eric, I notice your plate is getting a little empty. Is it time for round three? I think it's time for round three, although my round three is going to turn into my dessert round. We're going to finish up our econ scavenger hunt with one last plate. That's after the break.

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19:40Visit schwab.com to learn more. Hey everyone, Darian Woods here. Healthy economic growth means low unemployment. It means making more stuff. And it means higher mortality. So when the economy's doing well, deaths overall go up. That's kind of counterintuitive to hear, even for some economists. I would present the paper and the reaction I would have from economists would be, well, I can't see anything wrong with what you've done, but I just don't believe it. Booms, busts, and the surprising effect on mortality. That's in our upcoming bonus episode for Planet Money Plus listeners. If that's you, thanks for your support.

20:22If it's not, well, it could be. You get bonus content, sponsor-free listening, and you get to support NPR in the work we do. Go to plus.npr.org. We are on an economics scavenger hunt at the all-you-can-eat buffet. We've spotted 13 economic concepts so far, but we think we can find a few more. So it is on to plate number three. What'd you get? What's on your plate here? I got three desserts. I got the chocolate cake, the apple cobbler, and the bread pudding. And I also got two gelatos, the raspberry and the mango. It fills in the empty cracks and spaces in your stomach after you have two large plates of food.

21:05Okay, so at this point, we are feeling it. We are coming face-to-face with the dark side of this land of no prices. Because prices are a mechanism to allocate demand. This is what economists like to call the invisible hand. But when prices are too low, like when the cost of an additional slice of cake is zero, we may tend to overconsume. Yeah, and on top of that, sometimes with flat rate prices, there's this desire to get your money's worth, which leads to even more overconsumption. And look, overconsumption can sometimes be good. Like, that's one reason that a lot of public transit agencies offer flat rate pricing.

21:47is to encourage people to ride the bus or take the train more. But with buffets, overconsumption can physically pain us. So I remember growing up and my parents would always encourage us to eat more, eat more when we go to a buffet because we've already paid for it. You do. We don't have to eat dinner. We just stuff ourselves at lunch and we're good for the day. But in reality, that's not great economic thinking, right? Because if you're stuffing yourself and you're feeling bloated and you overeat, you're actually feeling worse and your utility is actually going down. Because utility is more than just about money.

22:28That's right. Utility is about your overall happiness. Yeah, economists love talking about maximizing utility. And Eric's third and final tip for optimizing your buffet experience, your life, is to do just that. maximize your utility, meaning eat for your overall happiness. Eric says it's a common mistake to try and eat your money's worth at the buffet. It's what economists call the sunk cost fallacy. If you're being rational, you can't let stuff in the past, stuff that you can't change, affect your decisions right now. In this case, we already paid the entrance fee to the buffet. So now we should only eat to maximize our utility.

23:12Economists like to use utility to measure individuals' satisfaction. So satisfaction can come from money and other materialistic things, but it can also come from just things that make you happy. Your favorite sports teams win, you get your day off with your family, you get to just have a nice sunny day. All these features or events gives you utility. Eric's reminding us that economics is not just about money. It's about so much more than that. It's about the things that bring us joy, that make life delightful, that make you want to get out of bed in the morning. And as we reflected on our buffet adventure today over our crowded plates of cake, cobbler, and multiple flavors of gelato, we realized that there's one important way that buffets bring joy to our lives that we haven't really talked about, even though it's been staring us right in the face.

24:03And this brings us to our final economic concept on our scavenger hunt. It is our 17th concept, lucky number 17. Which is that a buffet is a place where you can find stir fry noodles next to the shrimp ceviche sandwiches, where you can pile nachos and sweet and sour pork onto the same plate. Buffets offer extreme variety and people love having variety in their lives. It's the spice of life. It is the spice of life. That's an idea at the heart of so many economic models. And economists, they have this fancy name for our love of variety. They call it convex preferences. And in Vegas, the buffets have taken this insight and they have supersized it.

24:45The Las Vegas buffet may have started out as a simple offering of meats and cheeses, but today it has grown into this feast-a-palooza of exotic seafoods and cuisines from around the world. And these new jumbo buffets, they're not really loss leaders anymore. They're not about stuffing your face or getting a good deal. They're about catering to this very basic human craving for variety. In recent decades, economists have noticed that the entire U.S. economy has become kind of more like a buffet. Variety is increasing. And you've seen it, right? When you go to the grocery store and there are like, I don't know, 50 different types of shampoo and like a dozen different kinds of cereal.

25:24Economists say that having a lot of product choices, that's a sign of a healthy market. Because more variety means more consumer welfare. And this, I think this is kind of the perfect Vegas lesson. That more is more. More is more. And as we scoop up our last bites of more gelato, we also wrap up our all-you-can-eat econ scavenger hunt. We really got our money's worth, even though I know that's a fallacy. Okay, I really do feel like... But we did. ...get our money's worth with the food, but also with all of this economics. But we shouldn't keep you any longer. Thank you so much. This was a lot of fun.

26:04You're always welcome in Vegas. You know where I am. Today's show was produced by James Sneed and Nick Fountain with help from Emma Peasley. Erica, we should try to see how many different kinds of dessert we can fit onto one plate. Okay, fine. It was engineered by James Willits, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and edited by Jess J. A little Oreo peanut butter dream. Oh, it's an Oreo peanut butter mousse. Ooh. Uwe chiffon cake. Ooh, you should get this. Okay, we're going to get one of these. Okay, we're up to three different tiramisu. I do love tiramisu. Here, I'll get some for both of us. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

26:40Raspberry panna cotta. Look at this beautiful pink color. Chia seed pudding. You're a fan of Jell-O, aren't you? You love Jell-O. All right, we're going to get some Jell-O. I'm Erica Barris. And I'm Jeff Guo. This is NPR. Thanks for listening. Egg tarts. Oh, my gosh. Oh, it's hot, too. Jeff, you're very good at buffeting. Thank you. It's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.