Should Restaurants Charge Customers a Fine for 'Food Wastage'?
SodaHead Living
2012/05/18 18:00:00
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We'll admit it: Sometimes our eyes are a little bigger than our stomachs. But we don't expect to pay extra just because we're feeling a little full! The Kylin Buffet, a Chinese restaurant in England offering an all-you-can-eat buffet -- has posted a notice warning customers of a $32 for "food wastage" fine, The Daily Mail reports.
One mom was told she had to pay the fine after she, her 10-year-old son and 6-year-old niece left two onion rings, a piece of shrimp toast and a spring roll on their plates.
"After we had our starters, we went up for our main course. But a member of staff came over and asked if we weren’t going to eat the food on our plates, and said we would have to pay an extra $32 to cover food wastage costs," Beverley Clark told the Mail. "I was furious and said we were already paying $28 for three meals, but the staff kept checking if we had eaten the food. In the end I wrapped it up in a [napkin], and put it into my bag when they weren’t looking, so it looked like we had eaten it."
After Clark complained, the restaurant deducted about $5 from her bill. "In the end I didn’t have to pay the extra charge, but it felt as though they were trying to rip me off," she said.
"After we had our starters, we went up for our main course. But a member of staff came over and asked if we weren’t going to eat the food on our plates, and said we would have to pay an extra $32 to cover food wastage costs," Beverley Clark told the Mail. "I was furious and said we were already paying $28 for three meals, but the staff kept checking if we had eaten the food. In the end I wrapped it up in a [napkin], and put it into my bag when they weren’t looking, so it looked like we had eaten it."
After Clark complained, the restaurant deducted about $5 from her bill. "In the end I didn’t have to pay the extra charge, but it felt as though they were trying to rip me off," she said.
Sam Fung, manager at the Kylin Buffet, is standing behind the policy. "I accept that my staff should not have spoken to the family about the food on their plates more than once. However, they left a lot of food from the buffet on their plates and we have to charge for wastage of food," Fung told the Mail.
Now, we don't know how it is in England these days, but in America, you're often given way more food that you could possibly eat. And we also have a growing obesity epidemic ... if anything, restaurants should pay you for NOT finishing your food!
Now, we don't know how it is in England these days, but in America, you're often given way more food that you could possibly eat. And we also have a growing obesity epidemic ... if anything, restaurants should pay you for NOT finishing your food!
Top Opinion
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Revolution 2012 2012/05/18 20:07:55
Of course not!!!!!!!!!!
Once we pay for it, it's ours and we can choose to finish it or not.
I worked at a buffet restaurant for a while many years ago and the waste of food is shocking.
A $32 charge is excessive, but people who just pile as much as they can on to their plates so that NO ONE ELSE can enjoy it are just jerks who deserve to be charged. It should be a FAIR tax though not some ridiculously expensive tax. I paid to eat there too so I should have as much right to snag a few crab legs as those selfish families.
You pay to eat as much as you CAN eat, it doesn't mean you own the whole buffet.
Course may not be good business policy, but that's up to them.
(Oh, and they can compost their food and have local farms come take it away...)
If the restaurant wants to divvy up portions, then to the restaurant managers/owners I say, If you don't like that people may waste food, then don't have a buffet: it is YOU, the restaurant owner, who is wasting the food by serving food in buffet style, which you do in order to attract people FOR the very purpose of offering LOADS of food at once flat price, in the interests of making PROFIT for yourself. And now you want to charge us again on the back end? Nice try.
Do they also charge customers for the food they ordered/prepared but never sold? Answer: Yes, by marking up the portions to the next customer, cutting back employee hours and benefits, ect. Did they ever consider better management practice, e.g., buying more appropriate amounts of food? Yeah, but that's too hard and they don't make enough money that way and they're not smart enough to turn a profit that way, so they do what? -- That's right, they have a buffet! They bang the bell and wave us ALL in with a hardy, "LOAD up, folks! mooooo!"
Oh and for the people who say they should only take what they can eat, there's been buffet places like this everywhere for a long time, if they didnt want wastage of food then i'm pretty sure they could do something else than yet again finding a way of squeezing cash out of people, its really not about wasting food its about getting money out of people!