Last time I went to a Japanese buffet, the buffet is AUD55 per person and only valid for 90 mins, and the last dish must be ordered 15 mins before your time finishes.
They also suggests that they charged AUD20 per 200g food left over.
Is this commonly acceptable in Australia?
can't you just discretely slide the left overs into a neighbouring plant pot?
Pay the extra $20 and have a food fight
per 200grams.
You could ask for a doggy bag but they probably have already cooked it…
Food wastage is not fair to those that lack food, so a deterrent in the form of a fee seems fair to me.
Nothing to do with those people. Food wastage of perishables does not deprive anything from people who wouldn't get any anyway
I do not see the correlation except from a moral standpoint. The food you 'wasted' is not going to be fed by the restaurant to the hungry drooling folk outside. Chef will probably bring all that unfinished steak home anyway for his sumo terrier.
I never knew they charge for this. Aren't they just going to throw out a large portion of the food when they close up anyway?
No quality buffet is not a farmyard trough
Like yum cha table service no food is prepared unless someone requested it.
The only waste is selfishness to pile 200gm of excess food (size of and entire main course) just because they sense an entitlement
This smells like a money grab.
or a way of telling people to stop wasting food.
Yes! Australians are so entitled and need to be pulled into line. Food waste is such a major problem and people need some perspective. I quite like John Oliver's piece about wasted food in America.
oh rubbish.
So you condone people wasting food. You're selfish and clueless.
Abit OT there lol. We might aswell of said you condone obesity by forcing people to eat everything.
@Slippery Fish:
Very pretty response
Reality is portion size is a skill list is obese society.
The portion on the plate should have what you need no waste no overeating
I understand their concerns to avoid waste but at $20 per 200 grams that's ridiculous. It's obviously designed to ensure you don't waste food - however this can always come in handy.
Sounds like it's there to stop certain people ordering everything off the menu just to sample it.
I always wonder what this means if you put a bunch of something really yummy looking on your plate, and then it turns out you don't like it? Surely you don't have to pay for that? And if that's not payable, how will they differentiate between that and deliberate/negligent wastage?
If you think something is yummy but haven't tried it before (e.g. mystery meat, or seafood… they can always be a gamble) then take 1 or 2. If there's a small qty of wastage, they usually don't bother, but if there's half a plate, expect to be charged!
The Japanese buffets I've visited are simple yumcha style 1-4 pieces sample size.
Not self serve,
staff provide table service.
Certainly be very difficult to have 200g left over unless you got many meals you didn't take more than a bite.
This is pretty common for Japanese buffets and Korean grill places.
From the numbers this feels like Suminoya in the CBD.
I've been there quite a few times, and they don't enforce the charge unless you've quite obviously ordered more than you could reasonably finish. The groups I've been with have had bits here and there left over and never had an issue.
If you're asking the question here, then clearly the deterrent factor is working (:
the food argument is valid
because this restaurant will 'NOT' cook or serve the food unless someone orders it.
The food will not be wasted if not ordered , unused food will be stored safely for the next or other future day to be prepared.
It is not a sizzler buffet
Not it is not. Imagine the food is not good and you leave it. You still get charged.
that's a minor assumption,
It may be poor quality then you would express that too them and they will take it back and apologise to you.
Then don't grab large portions?
Not my experience. They insist the food is good and charge you.
If they do not want wasted food or minimise it, do not offer a buffet.
If I order something I know and like, and then it is not up to scratch it is not my fault.
This is a bit like those people that rent out rooms in their house and then stipulate that the only want people who are there during the week or at weekends. However, rent is paid for the whole week of course.
If you want your house to yourself, do not rent out rooms.
If you do not want wasted food, offer a la carte service.
Most buffets you go to, you pick your food and you choose the portion you want ie. 1 piece or full plate. That's the whole point of all you can eat. The policy is basically to deter food wastage. There are people out there who grab plates and plates of food and not eat it.
@Ughhh:
Most buffets are self serve
but Asian and Japanese buffets i have been to recently started adopting the YumCha style of order and delivery
you get a menu at your table
every 5 - 10 minutes they will ask for any orders you'd like to make from the menu
they'll bring you a small - medium serving size
sessions completely close 1 - 3 hours, all tables vacated and new group comes in
Pretty hard to waste excessively unless you are deliberately doing so
I don't understand the sentiment of this being purely Australian thing. I know that South Korea has fees for left over food in many buffet places. I did hear that some Japanese buffet place do this too, though I've never been to a Japanese one.
This is fairly normal considering that buffet make money because people don't eat a lot more than their usual size even if you allow them to have unlimited amount of food. That's the business model. Some people might eat far more than what you charge them, but most usually fall under certain boundaries where you can make some profit. People wasting food can potentially make them lose money, since people can just have one bite and not have the rest of it. So these fines are there to deter people from doing so.
As long as you don't waste your food, you will not have to pay for those fees. I've not been to any of the YamCha style ones so I cannot comment on those, but if it is "Eat all you want" buffet, you can always get small proportion to try them out before getting an entire plate full of it and leaving it for no other reason than "I don't like it".
The logic is pretty sound. The restaurants charges you on an all-you-can-eat basic. Once the time is up, it is assumed you have eaten all you can eat. If there is still food on the table, that means you have taken more than you can eat, food that can no longer be used by other patrons. Thus, you are charged for an extra person.
is the $20 charge per table or per person?
$20 per 200g left over, I doubt they actually charged someone before though
most places is 200g per full buffet paying customer,
at a table of 2 4 6 or 8 people. it is averaged at 200g per person so one person technically may waste lots and others none
While I have some sympathy for the reasoning behind this practice, I question the legality ie how could it be enforced by the restaurant, particularly if you pay by cash.
I doubt the police would be interested in what is a civil matter.
this issue stems from 90 minute time limit, everyone eats at different paces. This to me is not on and i would not give any restaurant that enforces this my patronage. Once you are full, you stop eating. Charging per leftover in this case is just a money grab and not acceptable.
once your full stop ordering is the correct motto.
If you don't like the policy go elsewhere
200g is more than the serving plate size so it is implausible to claim you were given a final plate had one bite and was suddenly full and unfairly straddled with 200g excess.
Certainly would not be 200g on that final plate.
Nope, we encountered this in Japan too. One Japanese BBQ we went to we went over, only just. Only a few piece that we would have taken, they didn't mind. It's really the idea of food waste, not a money grab. Can only imagine some people trying to order more and just doggie bag a shit ton of food for leftovers.
It's to deter people from over-ordering and not eating the food, especially if the food is expensive. I love suminoya at Sydney and they have a similar policy where any leftovers over 200g is charged.
I think it's fair and minimises food wastage and slow service as you only order what you can eat.
If you are talking about the Japanese BBQ buffet there (shabu shabu), then it is perfectly valid. They come out with probably 200g of sliced meat on a plate at a time. If you don't think you can finish, don't order 1kg at a time. Simple.
$100/kg is very high rate, almost could be considered a penalty, which is of dubious legality (like how private car parks charge a high fee for non compliance with the Ts and Cs, which has never been upheld in an Australians court). What of the customer just genuinely didn't like the food. Do the offer sample size portions which are not counted in the charge?
If they are so sensitive about waste/over ordering, then why not just charge the standard takeaway price for the food left over and let them doggy bag it, is if they had ordered it as a takeaway order in the first place?
Seems kind of sick to use price signals to force someone to eat something they don't want to because they are not willing to pay such a high fee.
In case anyone wondering if every buffet is like this….
I've been to 4 buffet so far in Sydney
The Shangri-la seafood buffet is 75 per head, it didn't mention anything regarding waste/left over fee and no staff reminded me about this either.
The Korean BBQ is 29 per head and the staff will remind you that you will be charged if there's an obvious waste of food or over ordering however they didn't mention how much they will charge you.
The Chinese hotpot buffet is 35 per head, they have a similar policy but it seems they don't really care, the staff will only remind you if they are going to close and you still keep ordering.
Only the Japanese one I went to last week actually put "$20per 200g will be charged " note on the menu and the staff will remind this before you start ordering…
Why should you worry about whether they charge you for unfinished food on your table at a buffet…
You shouldn't have left over food period…
Whether that be eating out or at home…
oh grow up, smart people stop eating once they are full.
not sure what your "grow Up" comment in response to my post actually means but if that makes you happy being a keyboard warrior and you get fantastic orgasm out of it… im glad I could of helped.
I'm no warrior for telling you to grow up, act like an adult, and learn some common sense. Don't play the 'keyboard warrior card' just because someone has disagreed with you, that's purely childish.
I'll say it again, smart people stop eating once they are full.
and it does not make me happy that I have to tell a grown man how to eat, it saddens me greatly that this necessity exists. it's pathetic.
@gsxo: Not sure why you're so angry, all they're saying is that there shouldn't be food wastage.
Guess no one's ever heard of the Chinese saying, eyes are bigger than your stomach? Where you order so much but then realise you can't finish it…
There must be a lot of dumb people out there since there's a obesity problem.
I have to question why people are wasting food in the first place. Surely you'd just get exactly what you want and the only stuff left over is bones and fat and whatever.
Wasting food at a buffet is poor form…
That's a fairly common arrangement at a japanese buffet though