In Brussels, two neighborhood restaurants were only open for lunch, and still both restaurants lost money because they couldn’t cover their fixed costs. Members of the Lubavitcher Hasidic group came to both owners and offered the following: make one restaurant dairy only, the other meat only (to abide by religious requirements), and we will make your restaurants profitable at dinner, and your lunch business will improve too. The owners agreed-and lo and behold, lunch business boomed, and the restaurants were full at dinner too. Clearly, there had been an excess demand for kosher restaurants in the area; and the increased demand at dinner spilled over into the related market at lunch. Resources that had stood idle (at dinner time) were now being utilized. A clear Pareto improvement.
A Kosher Compromise
TAGS: food
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Pareto improvement?
What about the patrons of the poorly perfroming restaurants who were displaced when he menus changed and as a result didn’t want to eat there…?
Eileen: Da Bruno is dairy and it’s about 300 yards away from Balthazar, the meat restaurant. Chez Gilles closed long ago and was in another part of town.
Sounds more like a cartel to me.
Are you sure this is an economics blog? Think about this.
Going to specific restaurants to ensure that no meat is in the presence of dairy, and vice versa? In the year 2010? Really? I hope the restaurants are not adjacent to each other and share facing open windows…
Huh, the same thing happened in London, England.
Orli’s Kosher Dairy 108 Regent’s Park Road
Burger Bar 110 Regents Park Road, N3 3JG
I missed the word “Lubavitcher” in the 2004 National Spelling Bee (I tied for 8th). This is the first time I’ve seen the word in context online. Thank you.
And its good to hear that Lubavitchers are smart economists… if only they could economize their name and get rid of that unnecessary “t.”
Da Bruno (http://www.dabrunorestokosher.com, rue Froissart 43): seems OK as a vegatarian restaurant as well.
Balthazar (http://www.resto.com/balthazar/, rue Archimede 63), doesn’t describe itself as kosher, at least not online.
@ Maurits: Yes, but if you look at the menu for Balthazar, you’ll notice that there are no dairy or non-kosher meat items. (no seafood, no pork, etc.)