Take what you need, all the rest is greed (From The Argus)

Take what you need, all the rest is greed

12:12pm Thursday 11th November 2010

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By Jo Chipchase - Letting off steam »

A couple of years ago, I spotted an amusing sign in a friend’s parents’ kitchen that proclaimed “Take What You Need – All the Rest is Greed”.

After being served a modest dinner at that house, I found myself considering the concept afresh. Even if we don’t always manage to live by this standard (I fall seriously short and my friend failed to apply it to anything at all), it honestly made me think twice about opening the fridge door and reaching inside for that second helping of dessert / cheese / cottage pie. And the fridge door can be a metaphorical one, of course.

Today, the “all the rest is greed” concept springs to mind when contemplating certain retail environments, such “eat as much as you like” restaurants. I’m sure most of us have, at some time or other, tried the ‘carvery experience’, where we’ve piled our plates high with food (“it’s free to eat more, so we must do so!”) and then felt sick for an hour or so afterwards.

And it’s not just carveries that offer a flat-rate feeding frenzy. Taybarns, “the ultimate value all you can eat family restaurant”, is beating the recession with its seven UK-wide restaurants featuring a 34 metre food counter serving pizza, Chinese and Indian dishes, meat joints, rotisserie chicken, salads, pasta dishes, as well as featuring ice cream machines, stodgy puds and vats of custard. A meal in Taybarns costs just £5.99 for adults (£8.49 at weekends) and £3.99 for kids, which is undeniably good value. But… is this eatery encouraging greed and wastage and leading us towards super-sized meals similar to those served Stateside?

I visited the Newcastle upon Tyne Taybarns a couple of weeks ago and was fascinated by what customers chose to eat. Given the breadth of choice (even if the oriental food is a seriously watered-down version), it was noticeable that many of the diners had piled their plates high with baked beans, bread, pasta, catering mash, chips and plain pizza slices. This is clearly how these places make their money: they rely on customers filling themselves with cheap carbs while partaking of a small amount of more expensive meat products.

I noticed how much uneaten food was left on customers’ plates. I was guilty of this too – picking something, nibbling half of it and then moving on to the next item. “Surely they give the leftovers to local farms for composting or to feed the pigs or something,” I wondered aloud. The waitress came over. “What happens to all the waste food,” I asked. “It goes in the bin and is just thrown out,” she said. After that, I felt a sense of unease at the conspicuous amount of uneaten food returning to the kitchen. I wouldn’t dream of wasting food at home - so why do it in a restaurant?

I believe the answer is fairly simple. In “eat as much as you like” establishments, we’re practically encouraged to behave like the aforementioned pigs: there are no signs reminding us that “all the rest is greed”, no pictures showing that people are starving elsewhere in the world, no discouragement to “try everything”. Therefore, “eat as much as you like” turns into “waste as much as you want”.

While Taybarns is answering the need for a cheap family dining experience during the downturn, the UK’s high street fashion retailers are answering a similar requirement for cheaper catwalk looks that don’t hit customers where it hurts - in the purse.

The other night, I watched a ‘Dispatches’ documentary about how sweatshop labour, in Leicester, was being used to produce clothes for New Look, Peacocks, Jane Norman and BHS. Dodgy subcontractors at the very bottom of the supply chain, effectively hidden from sight, were paying illegal immigrants as little as £2.50 per hour to sew clothes in high-pressure conditions, on unsafe machines. While I’m fairly convinced that the retailers really were unaware of these ‘invisible’ subcontractors, it makes me think about our behaviour as customers.

When we venture into Primark and become all excited about buying tops for £3.50 and jumpers for £5, is it really answering a need for cheap clothing or is it encouraging greed again? Greed in the customer (don’t buy the one garment you require – buy three!), greed in the retailer (drive down costs, rake in the profits) and greed in the supply chain (maximise the margin on low unit costs with illegal practises).

Yes, many people in society benefit from clothes being affordable but would we, perhaps, pay £2 more for a bargain garment to be confident that it’s produced in in decent conditions? Would we buy budget garments at all if we knew how they are currently produced, and by whom? Perhaps the labels should make the production details more transparent (although some labels depicted in the 'Dispatches' documentary illegally stated an incorrect country of origin).

The recession justifies purse-friendly options, for sure. However, if we want things to be “cheap as chips”, surely we should have some concern as to the source of the potatoes, and avoid throwing half our fries in the bin afterwards just because our eyes were bigger than our collective stomachs.

Oink oink!

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