PRICES

[RAD]

My $0.02.

I posted something to this effect a few months back. In Japan, they have a saying: "o-kyaku-sama wa kami-sama," which means "the customer is a god." Remember this. Use it, young entrepreneurs, and you can forget about much of your advertising costs.

I think we're all intelligent enough to know the basic principles of business, and don't need refresher courses on costs that Joe Consumer might not immediately recognize.

Building on this assumption, then, we should also understand that accounting is more art than science, despite what you learned in school. So if you're in the restaurant business, there are ways other than 300% wine/liquor markups to cover costs that are much less offensive. Cover costs somewhere where it's not so obvious: for example, add a bit to the price of a meal--even Scrooge himself is not going to calculate the dinner's ingredients. Run the A/C 1 degree warmer over the course of a year (and make sure the building is energy-efficient).

Again: the customer is a god. Don't insult his intelligence by marking up wine 300% when you're not providing value-added there.

RAD