Not a heuristic, but I would suggest an auction. Example: You have 5 people, A and B want seafood, C wants Thai, D wants Mexican, and E wants steak.

E -- I'll pay for 1% of everyone else's bill if we get steak. A -- 2%, seafood, C -- 3%, Thai, B -- 4% seafood (all pass)

Result, A + B get the food they want, but C, D, and E pay less (with B picking up 2.67% of their bills and A picking up 1.33%).

There are edge cases where this doesn't necessarily work well (e.g. someone with a severe food allergy gets stuck bidding a large amount to avoid getting poisoned), but overall I think it functions somewhat similarly to yootling.