Restaurants are feeling the pinch in two directions. With money tight, consumers are cutting back on how often they dine out. Meantime, food costs more. Way more.

Egg prices have doubled in the last six months. Dairy, chicken, beer and bread crumb prices are all climbing higher. Even when the core commodity escapes the trend, packaged ingredients and other restaurant supplies are more expensive as the costs of transportation climb due to higher fuel prices.

When people do go out, they are ordering less. "Appetizer sales are down. Dessert sales can almost disappear," says Dan Simons, principal at Vucurevich Simons Advisory Group, a restaurant consulting firm. "And the most expensive items on the menu aren't sold as much."

Restaurants know there's a limit to how much they can raise prices without driving off already broke customers. So for now, many are looking for ways to raise prices and cut costs that won't be too obvious.

The next time you go out -- if you can afford to go out at all -- see if you can find your favorite restaurant working any of these old gimmicks. Read on and you may even learn some tricks you can use to stretch a buck in your kitchen at home:

Cut back on portions:

Restaurants normally spend between 25% and 40% of their budgets on food, according to Barry Brown, president of Profit Strategies Solutions, which sells software for restaurants to manage inventory and profitability.

So if they can make a smaller hamburger and still sell it for the same price, their profits go up. Milk shakes at family diners that could once be split three-ways may now truly be single serve. There are reports of some restaurants buying smaller plates so customers won't notice they have reduced portions and chefs won't be tempted to heap on food to make dishes look appealing.

Eric Arthur, president of Marketplace Management Group, a restaurant procurement company in Collierville, Tenn., expects to see more junior-sized portions offered on menus. "You might have a shot-glass-sized dessert. It gives the customer the opportunity to say 'I can still have some dessert' and it gives the owner the opportunity to still add a dollar to the bill," says Arthur.

"Americans have been kind of spoiled. We have supersized everything," Arthur says. "That's not necessarily the way it is in the rest of the world."

Cut back on the most expensive ingredients:

Maybe the recipe calls for five sticks of butter. In good times, the baker adds six because she thinks it tastes better. But in tough times, she'll stick to five (or worse, substitute a stick or two of margarine in the recipe). The chef may prefer to load up on shrimp when preparing his signature gumbo, but he knows his job depends on restricting the number to four or five per serving.

Well, it's happened: postage has, once again, gone up. If you're like me, you probably send a letter through the mail once or twice a month, which means that the postage rate increase is now burning a massive 2¢ hole in your pocket. On the bright side, I generally pick up any pennies that I see on the sidewalk, so I should be able to make up the difference with about a half mile of walking.

I'm joking about this, but there was a time when the postage change would really have upset me. For a while, I used to sell a lot of items on eBay. One of the ways that I set myself apart from my competitors was by offering a standard fee for shipping and handling. If my buyer lived in the next town over, I made a fair bit of money; if he lived in Montana, I ended up losing dough. When the Postal Service used to up its rates, I had to up my rates, which made my flat rate fee seem a little less like a deal.

My fellow Walletpoppers have suggested some solid ways of undermining the postage increase. For example, Tom Barlow noted that, currently, "Forever" stamps are outperforming numerous stocks, and that buying large amounts of them is a nifty way to save a lot of postage money. However, as Tracy Coenen noted, it really doesn't make that much of a difference for "casual postage users" such as myself. Moreover, as my daughter has a tendency to affix stickers to the cat whenever she gets a chance, I prefer to minimize the number of stamps that I have laying around the house.

We should be used to this by now. Yet another money grubbing directive has surfaced from mother eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY), As covered in a story in The New York Times, eBay has decided to test market the strategy of allowing payment for transactions on its site solely through its wanton money portal, PayPal. The company intends to run this test on Australian eBayers. I wonder if our mates Down Under would be willing to tell us how they feel about this strategy?

eBay is claiming that this change in operating procedure will lower the incidences of fraud on the site. That's funny coming from them, when you consider that the worst eBay fraud nightmares generally run through its own PayPal system. I can believe that eBay's own fraud exposure might be cut by funneling everything through PayPal, but that's about eBay's bottom line. It's not about the bottom lines of its loyal patrons. The matter is further examined in this Associated Press article.

BloggingStocks reports that, as it stands right now, PayPal collects 2.9% from every sale which runs through its system in the U.S., plus another .30 cents for any sale under $3,000. The picture gets even gloomier for Australian eBayers, where PayPal charges 4.4% on sales, plus the additional .30 cents. What percentage of eBay Australia's sales currently run through alternate payment means? That's what I want to know.

If this change is enacted by eBay against the entirety of it's operations, it will be just one more step in the inevitable creation of "Wal-Bay", a site where large volumes of foreign made junk will be peddled by a thin crust of well protected sellers. In the meantime, alternate online selling strategies continue to take hold and grow as eBay's own growth has stalled. eBay can fake revenue growth for just so long. It's only a matter of time before things really start to get ugly over there.

When I was a kid, my favorite Wizard of Oz character was the Tin Man. The Lion was furry, but obnoxious, and the Scarecrow was nice, but a little too spastic. Toto was a yappy little dog and Dorothy was a girl and everyone else was just too damn weird looking. The Tin Man, though, was warm and caring, could blow steam out of his head, and made all kinds of fun sounds. He was just too damn cool.

I thought about the Tin Man recently because of some problems that Stryker Orthopaedics has been having with some of its replacement hips. Apparently, the company has a line of ceramic-lined hips that are guaranteed to last far longer than conventional plastic hips.

On the bright side, the hips have, thus far, lived up to their promise: in most cases, they are showing far less wear-and-tear than their plastic competitors. On the down side, 1-7% of these implants have developed an obnoxious squeak. Unlike the Tin Man, however, Stryker's customers can't get rid of their squeaks with a precise application of oil; they need to get their hips replaced again, a costly and intense surgical procedure with tons of potential complications.

My youngest sister was born with a debilitating liver condition. After a few operations and a brief period in which my mother collected her bile and kept it in the fridge (bile, by the way, looks an awful lot like limeade), Ella was put back together. Now, 24 years later, she is still going strong.

In the process of taking care of Ella, my mother ended up learning about all the resources that were available to parents of children with liver disease. She began working for liver groups and ultimately formed a nonprofit group of her own. This meant that much of my childhood and adolescence was spent staffing health fairs, attending nonprofit events, passing out organ donor cards, going door-to-door, and selling things to raise money. In fact, my sisters and I even collected and traded organ donor cards from different organizations. Along with my "Spastic Colon" t-shirt, organ donor cards were the best part of the gastroenterology conventions that we had to go to with fair regularity.

The problem with transplantation is that there simply aren't enough organs out there. Around the world, people are waiting on transplant lists for the hearts, lungs, livers, and other vitals that they desperately need. Unfortunately, most people are still uncomfortable with the idea of giving up their organs, often out of a belief that their organ donor status will be used as a consideration when it comes to giving them medical care. This, of course, hasn't been helped by urban legends about organ thieves, movies about cloning for organ harvesting, and pretty much the entire literary career of Robin Cook, who seems unhealthily fixated on the idea of taking organs out of unwilling patients. Even Monty Python got into the act with a live organ donation segment in their film The Meaning of Life!

In my business, I use very strategic advertising to market my business, along with many unpaid forms of marketing like blogging and participating in online communities. Whenever I receive an inquiry about my services, one of the first questions I ask is: "How did you find me?"

This has been one of the best moves I could have ever made regarding my marketing and advertising. No longer do I wonder if a particular piece of expensive advertising is helping my cause. I know exactly which publication or search engine sent a potential client my way.

The circle of outsourcing appears to be coming complete. Ashes to ashes dust to dust, high wages to high real estate values! Several Chinese firms are outsourcing to the U.S. to save money on...wait for it...manufacturing jobs!

Liu Keli, a Chinese businessman from the Shanxi province in China is investing 10 million dollars in South Carolina to open a plate printing factory. The factory will employ approximately 120 American workers who will be paid $12-13 per hour. Liu's reasoning for opening in South Carolina is simple, it is cheaper for his company to operate in the U.S. than it is to operate in China.

One of the areas in which Liu will save the most is in real estate here in the states. The plate making company saved 75% on the cost of land by building in North Carolina. Additionally utility prices in the U.S. are much cheaper than in China and also more reliable in South Carolina than in China. Even though labor costs are higher in the U.S. Liu is taking advantage of a tax credit from South Carolina to make up for some of the increase in labor expenses.

This whole arrangement is interesting to me because it seems to represent the way trade and global business can work out. When there aren't regulations to stop a business from opening a location anywhere on the globe, smart companies will find the areas which make the most business sense to operate in. I'm not a complete optimist when it comes to globalization but stories like these do a lot to re-enforce my opinion that the market can sort out complex issues on its own!

While many people blog just for fun, for others, this is serious business. There are blogs that are easily recognized as business ventures (like this one). And there are many that maybe aren't so quickly dubbed to be commercial enterprises.

"Mommy blogging" is one of the fastest-growing an most popular sections of the blogosphere. What is it? It's exactly what it sounds like: Mommies blogging about their lives. Many of them are doing it because they want to engage with others about the life of a mother and wife.

And others are doing it as a business venture. Advertisers have zeroed in on the mommy blogging culture and are spending big bucks to get exposure to the audiences of these blogs. They say that "word of mom" is one of the best marketing tools a company can have. And blogging can be very lucrative for the chosen few, who can rake in six figures if their audiences are big enough. Dooce is one example of a mommy-blogger gone nova.

Here's more about the business of mommy blogging from earlier this week on The Today Show.


Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

File this on under "incredibly obvious million dollar ideas that you wish you'd thought up first."

Having met more than a few true-blue beer hounds in my day, I realize that I am, at best, a novice beer connoisseur. That having been said, I have a few definite preferences, and there's nothing like being able to mosey up to a bar and order my favorites. Unfortunately, however, I often find myself staring down the barrel of a two or three item beer list and wondering if I've somehow been magically whisked away to Mogadishu. Seriously, I understand that not everyone will have Double Black Stout, but can't we do a little better than PBR, Budweiser and Miller Genuine Draft?

Well, my salvation has finally arrived.

Last month, Eric and Will Stephens, a pair of brothers, launched Beermenus. Basically an online restaurant and bar database, Beermenus allows users to check out the beer listings of hundreds of New York watering holes. Visitors can search by brand, restaurant, or neighborhood, and can compare prices at numerous places. They can then check out the restaurants' websites and get directions through Google maps.

Unfortunately, the site is still a little small, offering listings for only 170 bars. Worse yet, it only deals with bars and restaurants in Manhattan, and doesn't even really offer much above 96th Street. On the bright side, though, the brothers Stephens are already working on extending their database, and have plans to explore New York's other boroughs. Ultimately, they want to create Beermenu listings for other cities as well.

In the meantime, I have a friend in San Diego who might be looking for a million dollar idea...

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. Living in Southwest Virginia, he had a friend whose "moonshinemenu" site was a real hoot. It wasn't quite internet-ready, as it was carved on the trunk of a tree...

The City Café Bakery in downtown Kitchener, Ontario serves hot coffee, bagels, croissants, tarts and brick oven pizza with a quirky, outgoing staff and a neighborhood atmosphere. However, it does not have a cash register.

According to Bakers Journal, owner John Bergen, a former ceramics designer, wanted to open a bakery where he could "walk in anytime and it's a place where I can belong." For Bergen, that kind of business would involve simplicity and the honor system.

Bergen says. "What irritated me about going into [other bakeries], for example, was waiting in line for something as simple as getting a donut and a coffee. So the thought was, someone can pour his own coffee, grab his own bagel, cut it himself, throw the money in, and walk out. We don't touch 60% of the transaction."

Customers order their items, tally up the total and put their money in a fare box from an old bus. To make things simpler, prices are rounded off to the nearest quarter with taxes included. They do not take credit cards.

Every six months they check the numbers, and only once did they come up short. But, Bergen believes that customers are more likely to overpay than underpay. "Some people come in and want a $2.75 loaf of bread," he says, "but they see we're busy so they throw $3 in and walk out." The City Café Bakery also discourages tipping and they don't answer their phone, so that customers won't have to wait for service while an employee is on the phone. Woo hoo!

But, how's business? According to Bergen, every week the City Café Bakery dishes out 3,000 bagels, 1,300 croissants, 1,000 desserts, and an untold number of pizzas, sandwiches and loaves of bread.

Not too shabby.

B. Brandon Barker also writes for Political Machine.

[Thanks to Kottke.org]

If you haven't been thinking of buying a Chrysler lately, maybe you should. The Detroit News is reporting that Chrysler LLC is offering customers guaranteed gas prices for the next three years. Our sister blog, the ever-vigilant, AutoBlog, was one of the first to report the news yesterday.

The sales plan is called "Let's Refuel America," and almost every Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep vehicle being sold allows you to also sign up for a gas card that will reduce the price you pay to $2.99 -- for the next three years.

Clearly, it's an interesting deal and possibly a fantastic one, depending how high gas prices go. Currently, The Detroit News reports, someone would save approximately $1,000 per year if you have a 12-mile-per-gallon vehicle. People who are not interested can get a different incentive like a rebate or a cash bonus.

But I don't know what's more depressing -- that Chrysler has to bribe people with cheaper gas to buy its cars... or that $2.99 is now considered a deal at the pump.

Geoff Williams is a business journalist and the author of C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America (Rodale).

Over on BloggingStocks, I've written about Barry Minkow's allegations of fraud at multi-level marketing giant Herbalife.

Here on WalletPop, I thought it might be worth taking a look at Herbalife -- especially its recruiting tactics -- from the personal finance perspective.

On the Herbalife webpage, there's a form you can fill out to receive more information about becoming an Herbalife distributor. Among the questions:

How much would you like to earn monthly?
An extra $500
An extra $1,000
An extra $2,000
The sky's the limit!

This post is part of a series about real-life signs we're in a recession.

Tobias Buckell tells me that the dojo in his hometown has added a new side business to its martial arts; balloons. This is one example of a growing movement of small businesses compensating for falling sales by adding new business products, sometimes with comedic results.

In my neighborhood, the local model train shop is now also making banners. Signs announcing the lure of 'free internet inside' are on every business door except the portable toilets.

I see the potential for ancillary businesses as a great way to weather the recession. For example-

• A combination funeral parlor and Ebay shop (sell off the estate)
• Why not cross Terrier breeding with ditch digging?
• A diaper service / defumigating service would be a natural.
• Tobacconists could make a mint selling bottled oxygen.
• Why don't laundromats sell deodorant?
• How about a combination pizza parlor & Weight Watcher's center?
• An optometrist that runs a car body shop on the side.
• And pick your politician – shouldn't they be selling bottled gas?

What is the funniest or oddest business combination you've seen?

This post is part of a series about real-life signs we're in a recession.

Move over Pampered Chef and Mary Kay. The latest in-home sales "party" concept has reversed the usual guest-to-rep cash flow. Instead of pixie-sized portions of a demonstration omelet, or a makeover that makes your dog bark at you when you get home, the new guest takeaway is cash.

So claim the many "gold party" services cropping up (curiously, overwhelmingly headquartered in Detroit). Companies like My Gold Party and Gold Party by ADI offer to help convert your friends' gold to cash, either by supplying you (for a fee) with the equipment and training for do-it-yourself appraisals or by sending a representative to your home who will set up shop in your kitchen.

Trading your bling-bling for cash is nothing new, of course. Many folks have turned to the jewelry chest when times are hard. Traditionally, you don a scarf and dark glasses and do it quietly in a back room across town. What's new is the idea that parting with Mom's locket or Dad's pocket watch is a rollicking good way to spend a Friday night, accompanied by spinach dip and boxed wine.

As has been reported by WalletPop previously, would-be gold brokers should proceed with caution, particularly if they are required to make an investment upfront. And there are compelling arguments for keeping the lid on your jewelry box for now.

Kyran Pittman blogs at Notes to Self.

This post is part of a series about real-life signs we're in a recession.

Normally, the loss of competitors in your field of business could possibly be considered a good thing, giving a boost of orders and income to your own business or employer. In today's economic climate however, the loss of competitors gives me cause for concern. Even as we struggle to accommodate growth in our facility, I'm worried by the downfall of some of our wood products compatriots. I know I've written that it doesn't pay to cry over lost manufacturing jobs, but that doesn't mean we should be without compassion either.

The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) reports for March that its Small Business Optimism Index is at its lowest point since the second quarter of 1980. Businesses are complaining that increased selling prices are not keeping up with overhead inflationary pressures. Nearly one-quarter of the NFIB survey respondents indicated that they raised employee compensation by a margin which is outstripping profitability increases. I believe that therein lies the downfall of my company's fallen competitors.

One of the biggest concerns I have with these job losses is that they tend not to be felt outside their own regions. We as a country lose a hundred good jobs here or there every day, in a hundred unnamed places. But it doesn't make the headlines because it doesn't sell advertising space. Government statistics never paint the whole picture either. The government bean counters expect that we're too dull to understand that the loss of a well-paid machinist is not mitigated by the addition of yet another undocumented food service worker. They only give you the bottom line numbers, painted with a broad and blurry stroke of the brush.

So, my employer's loss of competitors has a core which tastes quite bitter. As I work my long hours I sometimes pause to think; Was that competitor we lost as much a buyer of my goods as it was a rival? Could my employer be the next to go under, or my neighbor's, or yours? Please say a quiet prayer for the unemployed among us, then get back to work. That is, if you still have it.