Charged for an empty plate?!

[sandwichh]

I recently went to a greene king pub for a carvery. After plating up my dinner, I asked for a plate for my 10 month old, not to take any extra food but to take it off my plate to give to him. They wanted to charge me for it! Never had this issue before, AIBU?

You really think the op wasn't going to pop an extra potato on her plate, come on!

I'm guessing things like single grapes and the occasional 'sample' from the pick and mix.

I'm astonished too - the amount of people who can't seem to see outside their own individual bubbles...

No, of course not. If you buy a plate of food with a fixed amount, it’s yours. You can eat it, keep if for later, feed it to your child or use it as a modern art display if you want.

The ‘only feeding someone else a little bit’ issue only arises with either an all you can eat buffet or a partial buffet (as with a carvery where there are unlimited sides).

In this case, I also wouldn’t have an issue with the OP giving the baby part of her meat portion - that’s a set amount so what she does with it is up to her.

It isn’t just about the cost of the food, babies need a high chair that takes up room and has to be brought to table and taken away after and which has to be cleaned after them and then there’s bits that land on the floor that staff also have to clean up, so extra work for the restaurant. Surely all that is worth a few pound ?

I’m not sure if you are saying that’s fine or not but either way, ‘sampling’ pick and mix and taking ‘just one grape’ are 100% theft and no, I would never dream of doing either.

Just because a particular theft doesn’t amount to a value that is worth prosecuting doesn’t mean it’s not stealing.

If you want the baby to eat some of the carvery, you pay for the specific baby plate option on the menu to feed your baby from the carvery which is apparently £2 or whatever.

if you don't want to pay for the baby plate for the baby to eat from the carvery, then they don't eat from the carvery.

What you can't do is say I want my baby to have a baby plate and eat from the carvery but I'm not going to pay the advertised cost for it so I'll just add extra to my plate instead. Otherwise what's the point of having the baby plate option, everyone would just do that. People may think the carvery should let them rather than charging for the baby, which is a valid argument. But if they've decided not to you have to suck it up when you go there.

I'm agreeing with you - just trying to provide examples that I see as equivalent to the OPs behavior (which i also see as theft).

Exactly.

"One for baby, three for me. One for baby, three for me"

Add that up over three meals thats one extra meals worth of food.

They think that "its just a potato ffs!" without thinking that over a busy Sunday with hundreds of covers, its costs a hell of a lot to the venue.

Funny how the venue is stingy for charging for it, but they are NOT stingy for refusing to pay for it.

I do this all the time I'm not buying a full meal when he won't eat it and he's 2 !!

This restaurant sells a ‘baby bowl’. Nobody is asking her to buy ‘a full meal’. Interesting justification for theft, though.

Why did you need an extra plate?

It is different.
Husbands and wives don't share plates at buffet type places.

It's a business not a charity, of course they will charge for any additional service.

YABU.

But you got extra food specifically for someone else. It wasn't your food. You loaded your plate with extra with the specific intention of dividing it into two meals. No matter how unevenly. If your child hadn't been there, you would have put less on your plate.

If it was an adult who only wanted a few bites, you'd still have to pay for them.

Kids don't have some special status that means businesses should have to cut into their profits to feed them.

@SprayWhiteDung
"Also, it's obviously socially awkward - and likely seen as grabby - but I've never been to a carvery where they've stipulated that the food has to be eaten on the premises.

Taken simply, you could argue that the price you pay is for a full plateful, so if you only want to eat half of it there, you can quite legitimately take the other half home and heat it up tomorrow."

Absolutely NOT
All the "all you can eat " places I have ever been to have signs clearly saying that all food must be consumed on the premises..... Some of them offer a few bowls of sweets and I think some CF were filling tupperwares. One place we go to includes bottles and cans of drink in their price. When they first opened you could take away with you a half consumed bottle of Fanta, but they had to clamp down and ban anything leaving the premises because CF were opening 5 or 6 bottles and taking a sip so they could then leave with them!
In addition a lot of them also have signs saying that if you put food on your plate and don't eat it they will impose a £5 penalty!
We went to one of these last week with my niece and her 13 month old baby. The restaurant provided a high chair which occupied the space that a paying diner could have occupied, so they were already "losing money" because of the LO.(it is so wildly popular that they were turning people away).
They offered her a "child option" which she turned down because as he doesn't eat much she had brought his usual jars of food and yoghurt...and a bowl and spoon. They did kindly heat his food for her as he wasn't keen on eating it cold (niece did try it at room temperature).
I also noticed a new sign beside the fruit bowl which said " sorry, even the fruit is to be eaten here": presumably more CF were grabbing an extra apple or banana to eat later.
I do think that "all you eat" offers bring out the CF in far too many people.
On the other hand, when we went to a regular Alsatian restaurant with a friend and she ordered a huge choucroute (because she knew it would be good, even though she wouldn't be able to manage their standard portion size), no one batted an eyelid when she then got out her tupperwares to take the rest of the food she had paid for home. The same principle as a doggy bag: you have paid for what you have been served and it is entirely reasonable to take it home to prevent food waste.

Also in this case, the sides are unlimited so the OP doesn’t just want an extra service, she wants free food for the baby since I don’t believe for a second she wouldn’t take the amount she wanted to eat plus the amount she intended to feed her child.

Yes, this makes complete sense
When our Children were babies, at the most, they could just manage a few small bites from my plate, anyway
Nowhere close, to an actual meal
Sometimes it's just best not to request an extra plate, but just share the one
💚🙏💚

Still theft. That’s why this carvery has a baby bowl - so parents only pay for the small amount the child actually eats.

You are probably right it’s best not to tell the staff you intend to steal food for your child, though…..

Does it have a baby bowl though? I looked on a random carvery menu for Greene King and only saw the kids option at around £8 available, although different branches may have different menu options.

And it’s not theft if mum just got her normal portion that she wanted to share. I really don’t get some of the posters on this thread. They have no clue.

The OP says in her post at at 13.29 on 10/9 that there was an option for ‘a few quid’ so it appears there was. Also, even if she means the full child price, the carvery is for one person. Not two people but one won’t eat much.

Do you really think the OP didn’t get the amount she wanted to eat plus the amount she wanted for the baby? Because I don’t believe that for a second.

Something else to consider - where is the cut off? Another poster has said she does this for her two year old.

I do agree some posters on this thread have no clue, though. The casual justification of stealing food and the excuses - it’s for a baby, it’s only a carrot and a roastie, it’s unlimited food (yes, for one person) - are truly shocking.

Edited to add ‘some’ to the paragraph above.

40 years ago, the only restaurant in our holiday village charged my parents 50p for an empty plate for my 10 month old sister.

They used to eat there at least once a week, and pop in for a drink a few times a week everytime they were up on holiday- at least 16 weeks a year

They NEVER went back. And neither have any of their largish crowd of friends. How much that 50p cost the business?

And your parents are fully entitled to vote with their feet. You don’t say whether this was for a buffet or for dividing up a set amount of food but either way, providing an extra plate costs the owners something (staff time, washing up etc). Multiply that by the number of babies / young children in that restaurant and ‘just providing a plate’ can have an actual impact on profits.

Whether or not restaurants should offer free food to children under a particular age is a business decision on their part. The only restaurant in a holiday village probably has plenty of customers without offering incentives to get people through the door. The diners don’t get to decide that if the restaurant doesn’t do a ‘children eat free’ offer they will take the food anyway. I note your parents didn’t do this, they stopped eating there so they clearly recognised it was up to the staff whether this was permitted.

Having shared things from my plate with both my kids many times before, I’d say it’s perfectly possible that she’d not necessarily have needed to get any extra for a 10 month old who would just be picking at things. I’d also say that the extra that most people dish themselves up on buffet style meals compared to what they’d be served at a La carte is plenty to share with a baby. All these accusations of theft are completely bonkers.

And “a few quid” may mean completely different things to different people. That wasn’t confirmation of a “baby bowl” portion.

I accept your point about the baby bowl but in my view any sharing from a buffet / unlimited sides menu with someone else, no matter how little that person eats is theft. If there is no ‘baby bowl’, you pay the child price or feed the baby before or after (or take food if that’s allowed).

If you are saying you’ve done this with a buffet / unlimited sides / unlimited refills where it isn’t children under X age eat free then you have stolen food too. As I said previously, the fact it’s too small an amount / not worth the publicity to prosecute doesn’t mean this isn’t theft.

If you mean you’ve shared from an ordered plate of a set amount of food, that’s completely different - that’s your food and you can do what you like with it.

We've no idea if she got more food or not.