Why has takeout become a major food waste disaster area when small portion food vendors and consumers are all neglected? "The more you gather orders, the more you save money" induces excessive ordering platforms | food | waste

In this era where you can eat all kinds of delicious food with just one finger, ordering takeout has become an increasing choice for more and more people. According to statistics, as of the end of 2022, the number of domestic and foreign food users has reached 520 million. However, the resulting waste of takeout food is also becoming increasingly serious.

Recently, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Ministry of Commerce issued the ''Guiding Opinions on Giving Play to the Leading Role of Online Catering Platforms to Effectively Prevent Waste of Takea'', requiring the leading role of online catering platforms to effectively prevent food waste in online catering business activities.

"The online catering platform connects businesses at one end and consumers at the other, which is an important link to stop food waste." Chen Yinjiang, deputy secretary-general of the Consumer Rights Protection Law Research Association of the Chinese Law Society, recently pointed out in an interview with a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily that the "Guiding Opinions" put forward a number of items such as food supply, information display, consumption reminders, standard setting, and incentive mechanisms. The specific requirements are highly operable and have important guiding significance for preventing the waste of takeaway food.

Inducing excessive ordering to exacerbate food waste

Zhou Mi, a Beijing office worker who forgoes dessert in order to stay in shape, recently became obsessed with a chicken breast soba set meal at a light food restaurant. Regardless of the taste, price, or the most important calories, she is very satisfied, except that the price of this set meal is 2.5 yuan different from the in-store full reduction threshold. Every time in order to get the best price, she has to buy an additional set of "Dafu" that is the closest in price but never eats ".

"Dafu" belongs to glutinous rice cakes with high calories. Most of the light food audience will not take the initiative to buy it. However, Zhou Mi found that "Dafu" sells thousands of people in this restaurant every month. She believes that there are not a few people who have no choice but to make orders like her. After all, the price of the next mashed potato suitable for making orders is more than twice as high.

Starting threshold, full discount, take-out red envelope... Now, take-out platform merchants launched a variety of activities, the intention to let consumers "more gather together the more money", a variety of activities also virtually exacerbated the waste of food.

Chen Yinjiang has conducted research on this and found that compared with offline dining, online take-out food has become the hardest hit area for food waste. On the one hand, some consumers have the psychology of tasting fresh food and seeking novelty when ordering takeout. Once the food is quite different from the expectation, they will order other food instead. On the other hand, when consumers order food online, they often lack intuitive feelings about food portions, and various full discount promotion methods often induce consumers to overorder food and cause food waste.

Preventing takeaway food waste is an important part of stopping food waste. Article 10 of the Anti-Food Waste Law, which came into effect on April 29, 2021, clearly stipulates that catering delivery platforms should prompt consumers to order in a significant way. If a catering service operator provides services through a catering delivery platform, it shall provide consumers with information such as food quantity, specifications or recommended number of consumers on the platform page.

"The anti-food waste law provides for food and beverage delivery platforms, but the content is relatively general and lacks detailed rules for implementation." In Chen Yinjiang's view, the "guidance" is a strong implementation of the anti-food waste law, refines the relatively abstract provisions of the anti-food waste law, and clearly informs catering takeaway platforms and businesses how to implement it. while delineating the standard of conduct, it also provides a regulatory basis for the regulatory authorities, which plays an important role in implementing the anti-food waste law and curbing "waste at the fingertips.

Small dishes are snubbed by merchants and consumers.

Among the ten specific requirements put forward in the "Guiding Opinions", the first is to optimize the supply structure of meals and actively promote small meals. The online catering platform is required to encourage and guide merchants to further optimize the supply form of meals, enrich the specifications of meals, and actively provide small meals such as small dishes, small meals and small drinks.

In fact, as a specific starting point of the "CD-ROM Action", the implementation of small dishes has always been regarded by the industry as one of the powerful measures for takeaway platforms and businesses to implement the anti-food waste law and curb takeaway food waste.

However, the reporter learned from some merchants that due to various reasons, the implementation of small dishes was cold, and consumers and merchants did not seem to be "welcome".

"Unlike many people's understanding of half the ingredients and half the cost, most of the small dishes have very limited profits." Gao Di, who runs a Sichuan restaurant in Fengtai District of Beijing, once introduced small dishes on a take-out platform, but the sales volume was not good. Many consumers felt that since the quantity of dishes was halved, the price should also be halved. If the small dishes could not be half price, it would be a "loss.

Gao Di explained that the weight of the same dish has changed. To change the existing kitchen operation mode, if several people order the same small dish at the same time, the merchant can make it at the same time. However, if the small dishes at the midpoint of several take-out orders are different, the labor volume will be greatly increased. On the contrary, more labor costs and even higher prices will be required to obtain the same profit, but it is obviously difficult for consumers to accept.

Gao Di once talked with his colleagues about this problem and found that except for some merchants specializing in small dishes, most merchants are not very enthusiastic about implementing small dishes. Even if some small dishes are introduced, the types are extremely limited. Only a few common dishes are concentrated, which is convenient for "one pot". Some businesses even deliberately raise the price of small dishes in terms of pricing, just to "cope with the job". On the surface, they provide small dishes, but in fact they do not want consumers to buy them.

The amount of food is small, there is no whole dish with enough materials, there are businesses to take the opportunity to raise prices in disguise ...... When talking about the small dish experience, many consumers to the reporter Tucao, although some businesses in terms of price, seemingly to do the price halved "expectations", but deliberately fuzzy dishes specific information, excessive reduction in the amount of small dishes, resulting in the dishes cost-effective is not high.

Recently, after browsing a take-out platform, the reporter noticed that the details of the dishes provided by the platform merchants were too simple, especially in terms of the quantity of the dishes. Many merchants only used the words "1 copy" and "1 box" to describe them, and did not indicate specific information such as the number of specific dishes. In addition, the reporter randomly searched 9 restaurants, of which 5 provided small dishes, but most of the dishes were concentrated in vegetarian dishes, or common meat dishes such as kung pao chicken and fish-flavoring shredded meat, with limited types. There are still many small and medium-sized restaurants that do not serve small dishes.

Setting Scientific Mechanism to Curb Waste

"To prevent the waste of takeaway food, we must compact the responsibility of the platform." Chen Yinjiang pointed out that the current online catering platform is limited and there are many merchants settled in, so the algorithm and promotion mechanism of the platform will directly affect the business habits of merchants. The Anti-Food Waste Law has clarified the legal obligations of online catering platforms to combat food waste, and the Guiding Opinions provide clear and detailed standards of conduct. Online catering platforms must earnestly implement relevant laws and regulations, and set a more scientific mechanism. Guide merchants to change their business habits and concepts to curb food waste.

The Guiding Opinions propose that the online catering platform should prompt consumers to order civilized food in a significant way. After the actual measurement of the two take-out platforms, the reporter found that in the process of user submitting the order, the platform will prompt the consumer to order the right amount of food in the first column or in different color fonts to avoid waste, but in the process of ordering, the prompt is not obvious.

In Chen Yinjiang's view, in addition to further improving the propaganda tips and changing the consumer consumption concept, the online catering platform needs to start from the essence, establish and improve the incentive mechanism for merchants, and improve the enthusiasm of merchants against food waste.

Taking the implementation of small dishes as an example, Chen Yinjiang believes that in addition to setting a more reasonable threshold for starting and delivering prices, the platform should also set up a reasonable support mechanism, such as providing traffic support by increasing the exposure of merchants actively providing small dishes and displaying them in prominent positions on the front page. At the same time, the platform can also provide practical benefits to businesses by reducing the commission rate for small dishes and other means, and can give red packets, subsidies and other rewards to consumers for green consumption behaviors such as placing multiple orders to buy small dishes.

In view of the problem that merchants blur food information, the "Guiding Opinions" clearly proposes that the platform should improve the description rules of food weight information, guide merchants to optimize food weight, specifications or recommended number of consumers and other information, and reduce the display of invalid information.

"Clear food information should be a 'hard index', and there are also relevant requirements in the anti-food waste law." Chen Yinjiang pointed out that clear food information is not only convenient for consumers to purchase on demand, but also can avoid problems such as merchants using fuzzy information to deliberately reduce the weight of food. The online catering platform should clarify the requirements for the display of take-out meals, and further refine and perfect the identification and description of the components and ingredients of the dishes, so that consumers can have a clear concept of the quantity of dishes.

As the most common mechanism for ordering food at present, Chen Yinjiang believes that to set a scientific threshold and calculation method, preferential treatment can be given by means of direct price reduction or accumulated consumption coupons, instead of allowing consumers to collect orders in order to collect orders. Online catering platforms and businesses should also explore more "green" practices, such as replacing full-cut staple foods with more easily preserved pickles prepackaged foods.

"the implementation of the anti-food waste law is not a simple propaganda, but to implement the concept of economy in the rules, reward mechanism, commission collection and other aspects of the online catering platform." Chen Yinjiang pointed out that it is necessary to take multiple measures to promote the establishment of a long-term mechanism to prevent the waste of takeaway food. The relevant departments should also strengthen supervision, promote the fine management of the platform, and jointly advocate economy and oppose waste.