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I think it's generally agreed that pizza and steak (and a bunch of other foods) taste significantly better when they're hot. But even if you serve it hot, usually about halfway through eating, the food cools enough such that it's notably worse because it's not hot enough.
One way to mitigate this is to serve food on a warmed plate. But that doesn't really do too much.
What makes the most sense to me would be to serve smaller portions in multiple courses. Like instead of a 10" pie, serve two 5" pies. Or instead of a 16oz ribeye, divide it into four 4oz ribeyes and cook and serve each separately.
I guess this is what fancy restaurants already do with their multi-course meals though, with each course being a small amount of food. And I suppose the logistics of serving more courses and getting them out at the right time while they're hot is a good deal more difficult logistically. So I guess you need to charge a lot more. Which gets you into fancy restaurant territory.
But then again, lots of expensive, fancy steakhouses will serve a huge 16oz or even 24oz ribeye for $100+. And similarly, even the best pizza places will serve normal-sized pies as opposed to tapas-sized. Seems wrong.
Not directly tied to the core of what you're saying, but I will note that I am example of someone who doesn't strongly prefer such foods warm. I do weakly prefer it being warm, as long as it's not too hot (that's worse than it being cold, because it hurts / causes minor injury), but I'm happy eating it room temperature or a bit cold (not necessarily cold steak though)
(I bet you also like your steaks medium-well. Just kidding.)
I'm curious: is this a case of you not having strong preferences about food in general? Or is it the case that you do generally have strong preferences about food, but don't strongly prefer such foods being warm? (Not that those are the only two options, it's just easier to phrase it this way.)
Ah, that's a good distinction. I think that what matters is usually "freshly prepared".
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Oh interesting. I didn't know that was the case.
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Yeah, I think so too. And more generally, people just aren't very choose-y about their food, much less willing to pay lots of money for it. So I guess that's probably it.
Also, if there was an inefficiency here, a restaurant trying to exploit it doesn't have a huge market to profit from. The market would be restricted to the local area. And people only frequent expensive restaurants so often. So yeah, there probably aren't many if any metaphorical dollar bills laying on the ground.
But... I suspect that there are "foodie points" up for grabs. Like, I suspect that serving four 4oz ribeyes hot really is a notably better experience for foodie-types, and a restaurant that pursued this would get respect amongst foodies.