alt Hacker NewsHow to make buffet breakfasts less wasteful
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> BREAKFAST IS THE most important meal of the day
First sentence of the article and already an error.
Toast, eggs, sausages, tomato, mushrooms and most of the other things are dirt cheap. Bacons a bit more expensive but I doubt that ever has any left over.
This article is dogshit.
The implied problem: People waste too much food at hotel breakfast buffets.
The work: Some people made a model (that itself is devoid of actual hotels, food, and people altogether, as well lacking validation) that let them wiggle some parameters and see if waste changed in that simulation.
The proposed solution: There isn't one. It's just dogshit.
We can learn roughly as much about how consumption and waste and profitability work in the real world by playing Roller Coaster Tycoon.
Staying in hotels is wasteful, to start with. Buen Camino.
Nudge theory. Applied to my favourite meal of the day. Gaaah. I think I'll simply fill two plates now. Or maybe 3.
If hotels do a virtual buffet and other nonsense I'll just opt out and grab some bits from a local supermarket, which I imagine is what they really would like - to eliminate breakfast entirely.
Just like making room service opt in - they can claim it's available but obviously a lot of people just don't bother because they pick up on the signal from the hotel that they don't want to do it
Personally I've never seen wasteful people at breakfast buffets in the UK. Greedy yes but not plates of unfinished food.
It's also good to remember how much breakfast regularly costs now. £15-20 is quite common at mid range places - £10 of yesteryear is exceedingly rare
Here's an idea: provide better food. That way people won't want to leave it on the plate.
> Or, maybe, don’t: when people do, they take much more than they eat. Compared with ordering from the menu, all-you-can-eat breakfasts waste more food—up to twice as much, according to one study.
Is that a cultural thing? We have pretty much zero food waste on any buffet as you can easily only take what you actually want to eat. It's just basic good education to be considerate with resources, especially food resources - and I rarely see people taking more than they actually eat, so it's not just an "our family" thing. If you do throw away a lot of foot on a buffet you're just an inconsiderate asshole - and if a restaurant location has significant food waste from that they should just start charging for leftovers.