NYC Restaurant Adds Surcharge For Uneaten Food

On Manhattan's West Side is a restaurant called Hayashi Ya, where for $26.95 you can eat all you want and the price includes Saki or soda. Should you fail to eat all of the food you've gotten, there will be a surcharge of 30 percent added onto your bill.

New York - The Japanese restaurant has had the policy of imposing a surcharge on wasted or uneaten food for about two years. As one approaches Hayashi Ya, there is a chalkboard sign that tells that not only can you eat all that you want for $26.95 per person, but for any wasted or uneaten food, you will be charged an additional 30 percent. That's an additional $8.00 to your bill. Chuck Hunt, a spokesman for the New York State Restaurant Association tells that he's not heard of any other restaurant doing the same thing. He does admit that food waste is a huge problem, not only for restaurants but in the home as well. According to a study released this past Summer, the Stockholm Water Institute says that 30 per cent of food in the US goes to waste, which equals about $48 billion a year. In a 2004 study, the University of Arizona claims that the figure is much higher, to the tune of 40 to 50 percent of US food goes to waste. Executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger and a former U.S. Department of Agriculture official in the Clinton administration, Joel Berg states that food waste is also taking into fact the crops that are left to rot in the fields as well as the waste that happens in homes and restaurants. ``All throughout the process of producing food there is waste,'' Berg said. ``I think Americans would be shocked to know the amount of food that is left on fields.''