West Orange Restaurant Owner Lowers Prices With Bold Business Move

WEST ORANGE, NJ — There is more than one way to “go big” when it comes to food.

A recent national trend has begun to take root in Essex County’s diverse restaurant scene: downsizing portions while also lowering prices. It’s a move that some restaurateurs say has been a long time coming, especially as their customers become more cost-conscious.

Jarrett Seltzer of West Orange is among them.

Last week, Seltzer, who owns and operates Bagels By Jarrett at 451 Mt. Pleasant Avenue, announced that he is resizing the shop’s gargantuan house-made pasta dishes to a more reasonable girth – while still leaving “generous portions” that fill your belly.

The average price drop for pasta dishes? A meaty five bucks.

It’s no casual feat messing around with his pasta proceeds, which were the restaurant’s biggest grossing category for June and July last year. Sometimes though, you just have to take a leap of faith, he says.

Patch recently caught up with Seltzer and asked him why he cut down on the huge portions of pasta that he used to send customers home with – and how they’ve been reacting.

The short story? It all started in the kitchen.

“We originally offered huge portions for one main reason: I only had so much stove space,” he explained.

“I figured if I only had a few burners, I may as well make a portion of rigatoni vodka huge so I can bring in more revenue using the small amount of burner space that I have,” Seltzer recalled. “That worked for quite some time, but we’re now seeing our frequent guests ordering a little less often than usual.”

It’s no secret that restaurants are paying higher prices for raw materials. But when customers also slow down their spending at the same time, it puts owners in a tough spot, he said.

The thing about Seltzer? He’s the type of cook who literally puts his money where his mouth is.

“The other night, my wife and I wanted pasta from the shop and I wanted a little bit of everything so I asked my team to just send me ‘half’ portions,” Seltzer told Patch.

Inspiration hit between forkfuls of rigatoni.

“My wife and I were eating and I said: “This is what we should be serving – no one needs a half pound of rigatoni before vodka sauce and a possible protein is added to the dish,” he remembered.

According to Seltzer, he’s banking on a belief that less is more when it comes to how much customers are willing to spend at a single trip to your restaurant. The theory? People will try more dishes if they can afford more – beefing up the total amount of the order.

The price has also been lowered for a few other items on the menu at Bagels By Jarrett, which has taken leaps and bounds in its diversity since the Houston Calls bassist launched his culinary career in Essex County a few years ago.

Typical of a chef, Seltzer breaks down his reasoning like a well-constructed recipe:

“The concept of lowering prices to make more money may sounds crazy to some people but it actually makes total sense. Nearly all our pasta dishes dropped by at least $5 a dish. So let’s do a quick example. Rigatoni vodka was a 1/2 pound of homemade pasta before vodka sauce and peas were added to the dish. I was getting $24 for it. I moved rigatoni vodka to 6oz before sauce and I’m now charging $17.”

Got it so far? Good – here’s where the experienced pasta connoisseur’s ears will perk up:

“We make all our pasta in house and rigatoni is literally just water and flour, so the cost is super low on the pasta itself. But in order for pasta to travel for a takeout business, you have to over-sauce it. Vodka sauce is expensive to make: heavy cream is $7 to $8 a quart, butter is expensive and parmesan cheese is expensive. You’re paying me for time and sauce ingredients when it comes to a dish like rigatoni vodka.”

Some of his other pastas utilize egg yolks, so there’s a higher cost on his end for those – but let’s stick with this line of thinking, Seltzer says:

“So someone buys the $17 rigatoni vodka, and then decides they really want to try the Burrata Bucatini dish because that’s also down from $26 to $17. For the portion and price, the customer will actually now spend $34 versus just one of the pasta dishes for that $24 to $26 because they feel like they are getting a better deal … and technically they are, because to me, they’re getting a better experience.”

“On top of that, I need to factor in someone who lives alone wanting to eat my food,” he said. “Again, the half-pound of rigatoni vodka is a ton of food and could last someone several days – so there’s bang for your buck there even at $24 – but if you want to mix it up and you don’t want to waste, a $17 to $20 dish makes more sense.”

OK, that’s a lot of food math. But are customers eating it up so far?

Yup, Seltzer told Patch.

“I started this on Monday and one of my customers immediately messaged me that he hates me (in a joking way) and that the move was genius,” Seltzer said. “He said he had three pastas in his cart, but adjusted it down to two because he also had a main and a pizza – and it was just for him, his wife and his toddler.”

“There’s no way he would have done two pastas if the portions and prices were what they were the prior week,” Seltzer attested.

Bagels By Jarrett has only been open on Mondays for a few months. But after rolling out the new pricing structure last week, Seltzer ended up having his largest grossing Monday to date.

Seltzer said there are a certain amount of fixed costs to running the “BXJ machine” – or any restaurant, for that matter. And when it comes to making sure the financial train remains on track, it often comes down to one solution: generating revenue.

Will surrendering $5 per dish pay dividends over the long run? Only time will tell. But Seltzer has never been shy about pulling the trigger on a heartfelt belief – and this is no exception.

“Everything I’ve always done has been crazy, so why not lower prices to make more money?” he quipped.

Seltzer isn’t the only restaurateur in North Jersey to rethink the relationship between their portion sizes and menu prices.

Earlier this year, Ilson Goncalves, the chef and owner of Samba Montclair, announced that he was lowering lunch prices along with meal sizes in an effort to make a well-deserved meal more affordable for cost-conscious diners – an effort he referred to as “right-sizing.”

“It'll take time to see if there's a change in profit, but I'm seeing more volume, which is great,” he told Patch. “Regular diners are coming back more frequently now for lunch.”

• See Related: Montclair Restaurant Bucks Trend With Smaller Portions, Lower Prices

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