Put your money where your mouth is! Indian restaurant charges customers £2 if they don't eat all their dinner

An Indian restaurant is taking no prisoners in the battle against wasted food – charging diners £2 a head if they leave too much on their plate at the end of a meal.

The Taza Indian Buffet in Dundee took the bold step after management revealed their frustrations with scraping 600kg of wasted food into the bins every week.

Now, patrons at the £14.99-a-head buffet will be forced to pay the surcharge if the leftovers on their plate are unable to fit into a small cardboard square that is handed out at the beginning of the meal.

A message on the square reads: ‘If your waste fills this space and it won’t fit in your face then it is £2 per plate…and no stacking it up into a pyramid.’

Defending the new measure, manager Vaseem Salimi said he hoped it would highlight the amount of food that is thrown away on a daily basis.

He said: ‘We realised that we were wasting 600kg of food per week and that was a real eye-opener for us. We wanted to do something to reduce that. We will always have some food waste because everything we have left at the end of the day needs to go in the bin, but it is about cutting down on needless waste.’

He also revealed that the drastic move has proved a surprise hit with customers who have become fed up with people putting excessive amounts of food on their plates.

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‘Most people are really happy to see it but there’s a few people who have taken offence. There’s only a handful of people who abuse the system.’

Mr Salimi added: ‘This isn’t about us making money – it is to get the message across. It would make us happy if we don’t have to charge anyone.

‘The new policy has been in effect for about seven weeks and we’ve only charged about three customers and we think that is too many. At the end of the day, it is £2 – it is there as a deterrent, it’s not to punish anyone just to try to get them to change their ways.’