Fine for customers who do not eat all of their plate

The owner of a very popular pub in the UK applies an anti-waste measure to customers who don’t eat everything they take from the steak buffet.

It is a modest amount, but significant, given that it was conceived precisely as a penalty.

“If you fill your plate too much and then don’t eat, you pay.”

Fine for customers who do not eat all of their plate

Mark Graham, owner of The Star Inn Vogue, owner for 20 years of a very popular pub in the village of St. Day of Cornwall, declared for The Independent that “any cook in the world would be annoyed or insulted by the waste.

Graham ruled that anyone who overdoes it while eating at the steak buffet and then leaves some of what they ordered there on their plate will now have to pay a fine of £2.40 (that’s about £2.86 euro).

“It’s only for the buffet, I give them to other dishes from the takeaway menu if they don’t feel good. But I say to those who pile it on: “Put a respectful amount on your plate.”

People from all over the world supported me in this decision. Those of the older generation like me know that if we left food on the plate, our mothers wouldn’t let us leave the table. We’re old school, the way things used to be.

People are now so entitled. They think if they’ve paid the money they can do whatever they like,” Graham told the quoted source.

Where the anti-waste measure still applies

The English restaurant owner’s approach to the problem of food waste is not new. A similar dynamic has been more frequent for some time now.

Since 2016, the owner of the Chinese restaurant Himalaya in the German city of Menden, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, established a fee of 2 euros that was added to the bill of anyone who left more than 100 grams of leftover food on the plate.

At this moment the measure is applied in many countries of the world, even in Italy. In China in 2020, President Xi Jinping launched the “Clean Plate” state campaign to reduce food waste. Thus fines have been introduced in “all you can eat” sushi places for those who order more than they can eat.

Anti-waste measures seem to be moving in this direction. The customer is forced to pay for what the restaurant owners are forced to throw away for no reason.