Bad Buffet Behavior Is Out of Control!

Should we be fined for our food waste?

Here at Cavendish Venues, four central London meeting and conference venues, we constantly strive to reduce our environmental footprint. An article in the Guardian earlier this week with this title caught our eye.

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“Should you be penalised for having eyes bigger than your belly? A Cornish pub is trying it out: Mark Graham, the landlord of the Star Inn, now charges £2.40 a person for buffet “excess leftovers”. “A few spuds is obviously no problem,” Graham told a customer who complained, but said that buffet behaviour was out of control, citing a plate “piled so high you could put a ladder and a flag on top of it”.

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I can believe it. I lose my mind faced witha buffet, although I usually clean my plate (gravely regretting my choices in the hours that follow). Are we our best selves as we take up tongs in the glowof the heating lamps? That depends which side of the chafing dish you are standing on. Our hunter-gatherer instincts are capable of making any food andbeverage professional quake; call it Homo Harvester.

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But we waste horrifying amounts: an estimated 17% of global food production. From 2010-16, food waste was estimated to have contributed 8% to 10% of human-made greenhouse gas emissions and I doubt we are doing any better now.

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Thankfully, science is on our case. Researchers at the University of Queensland this year explored what drives us to create an unscalable Jenga castle of sausage rolls, decorated with prawn gargoyles and surrounded by a custard moat.We might be driven by a “scarcity heuristic” (scared of missing out when there is not much left) or a “diversification heuristic” (taking things we don’t particularly like “for variety’s sake”). Too many options can cause cognitive overload, leading us to take a bit of everything.

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Can we be tamed? Other research has suggested that penalising buffet waste is “ineffective”; people respond better to smaller plates and rewards for eating up. I doubt anyof this would be enough to calm my unbridled buffet lust; nothing short of a shock collar activated on my 10th trip to the desserts would do it.”

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Cavendish Venues has striven to reduce our food waste over 20 years; earlier in October, we reported how we were monitoring our food waste via a new app, Wiinow.

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For 25 years, Cavendish Venues has been leading the way when it comes to reducing our environmental footprint. For example, we were the first UK venue to introduce pens made from recycled materials, the first to be certified landfill zero, etc. For more details, see our conference venues sustainability page.

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Cavendish Venues:

· Conference Venues inthe City of London and the West End

· No venue is morethan a 4 min walk from an underground station

· Seating up to 350delegates

· Accommodating 253m*2m exhibition stands

· Market Leading Customer Service · Get in touch now on 0207 706 7700 or enquiries@cavendishvenues.com.

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