'Big Brother' Restaurant Spies on Diners

Cameras, sensors record customers' every move for study on consumer behavior.

ByABC News
February 6, 2009, 8:49 PM

Dec. 10, 2007 — -- Imagine enjoying a friendly lunch with co-workers at the company restaurant. Now imagine every bite, sip and swallow being monitored by company researchers, in a kind of culinary Big Brother scenario.

That's the reality at the new Dutch Restaurant of the Future, where 23 cameras track customers' every move. Facial recognition technologies record every smile and every frown, and a scale built into the floor weighs customers as they check out. Specially designed chairs note diners' heart rate as they get their first taste.

It's all part of a life-size, 10-year social science experiment designed to answer one seemingly simple question: Why do we consume the way we do?

"We're trying to understand what the underlying factors of eating and drinking habits are," said Rene Koster, the project manager and an economist at Wageningen University, which hosts the restaurant.

"A lot of our decision making is directed by the subconscious," Koster continued. "People often react automatically."

Previous studies have shown that people rarely understand their own behavior when it comes to food and drink. Elements like the color of a mug, for example, can determine whether consumers perceive the same coffee as strong of weak, with red being associated with a particularly robust brew.

And people eating a larger amount of ice cream out of a bigger bowl report being as full as those eating less ice cream out of a smaller bowl, according to one study conducted at the University of Illinois a few years ago.

The Restaurant of the Future opened its doors Oct. 4 and hosts only university students and employees who have signed off on being monitored as they dine. From observation rooms nearby, researchers watch and analyze every move, studying how factors like size, smell, ambiance and packaging influence consumer choices.

In addition to the main dining hall, which is outfitted with attractive white tables and elegant floor-to-ceiling windows, the Restaurant of the Future hosts four smaller "mood labs," identical rooms where, with the flip of a switch, researchers can change the colors of lights, introduce smells or put up panels to give diners the sense they're eating by themselves rather than in a group.