Loud in the restaurant: Your food will be more expensive

Noise in restaurants not only makes conversation difficult, but can also affect your choice of food and your sense of taste. The noisy environment often causes you to eat or drink more than necessary – and therefore spend more money. Restaurants could exploit this knowledge.

In many restaurants and bars, it is not just loud, it is too loud. This is proven by data from the Sound Print app. To assess the volume, the decibel level (dB) is measured indoors: According to the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, a conversation between two people should be 50 to 60 dB loud. If the level indoors is 76 to 80 or higher, the noise can damage hearing – for example that of guests and staff in the restaurant.

The reason is the so-called Lombard effect: In order to understand each other better, people speak louder and in a higher pitch: “The background noise becomes louder and louder and can become a burden,” says akustikform.ch.

But it’s not just your mood that’s affected, your taste and eating habits are too: According to a study, you tend to choose unhealthier foods in noisy environments because the noise impairs your ability to make conscious decisions.

It has also been found that you have a harder time recognizing flavors when there is loud background noise. If you don’t like the taste, you lose concentration and eat more quickly. “The loud music can distract people from how full they feel and cause them to eat more than they need,” says Dr. Qian Janice Wang, Professor of Consumer Psychology at the University of Copenhagen.

This plays into the hands of restaurant owners, because if you eat and drink more, your table bill will also increase. In restaurants, people therefore consciously focus on a lively atmosphere and turn up the music to encourage consumption – this is called sonic branding.

The decision on how the restaurant is furnished also has an impact: Researchers point out that current interior design trends mean that sound-absorbing curtains and fabrics in restaurants are now being replaced by muted wood and steel – materials that actually amplify the sound.