Who meets the new price

The quiet weeks are when prices move here. The room is empty, so being wrong looks cheap, and a change made now has a clear month to settle before the city comes back.

I understand the logic and I think it is the wrong way round.

Look at who is actually in the room in late July. The residents who did not travel. The office lunch trade. The family that orders on the same two nights every week. The man who has been in on a Tuesday since the place opened. In an emptied month a business is served almost entirely by its highest-frequency customers, and high frequency is the same thing as an accurate memory of the old price.

They are the only people in the market who could tell you what that dish cost in May, to the riyal, without checking. An increase taken now is delivered in full to the audience best equipped to price it. The customer who comes three times a year, who could not name last year's number and would have paid the new one without a second of thought, is not there to meet it at all.

There is a second cost. In a thin month the regulars are not a slice of the revenue, they are most of it, so the whole downside of the decision sits on the people the rest of the year depends on. The same holds for a delivery fee, a minimum order and a subscription.

None of this argues against the number. Costs move, and a price that has not changed in two years is also a decision.

The number is a finance question and it gets weeks of argument. The month is a marketing question and in most places it has no owner at all.