This is sparked off by some restaurants in New Zealand that wont allow doggie bags as they say it might result in food poisoning. One could argue that you have bought the food, and that you have the right to take it home. Or one could argue that the bill covers the pleasure of sitting in the restaurant eating the restaurants food and that you have no right to it afterwards. This may vary by country but any thoughts?
My experience of “fine dining” is that portions are so small that there is rarely anything left for a ‘doggy’ bag.
I’m buying not having to do the dishes. So, I guess that would be the “experience.”
ETA: I do think I’ve bought the food, but if their policy is clear beforehand, I can live with it.
Since about the only times I eat out are MacDonald’s Value meals, I say it is for the food.
Let’s move this to Cafe Society.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Sorry I wasnt very clear - this was a legal question rather than a opinion one - do you own the food that you bought?
Both, I can’t really say one or the other. If it is a social setting, the experience. If solitary, the food.
However even the social setting restaurants are usually to try new foods.
It is a private business. They can set their own rules in my opinion. As long as they are stated clearly in advance, there is no issue. People pay for some combination of experience and food but that greatly differs based on the type of restaurant. For McDonalds and other fast food restaurants, you are mainly just buying a sack of food and you can do whatever you want with it. Buffets usually do not allow doggie bags either for obvious but different reasons. You can eat as much as you want in a given time-frame but they aren’t going to let you take home a bag to feed your family the next day too.
I don’t know much about New Zealand but I am sure that some fine dining restaurants in the U.S. do not allow doggie bags either. That is perfectly justified IMO. The threat of lawsuits in case someone gets sick is very real and can be devastating for a smaller establishment. What if someone leaves a bag of leftover cream and seafood in their car for a day, decides to eat it and gets sick? Even stupid lawsuits can bankrupt a fine dining establishment.
It is up to the business to decide what type of brand and experience they want to create. McDonalds has lawyers on staff that can fend off complaints that a month old hamburger killed someone’s poodle but fine dining establishments often can’t even withstand simple accusations. IANAL but I believe it is just simple contract law as long as the policy is clearly stated in advance.
It doesn’t seem clear to me if the article is talking about “to-go” orders, or bringing home your leftovers after you’ve eaten in the restaurant.
If the former, I think it’s completely reasonable that they don’t have to provide that kind of service if they don’t want to.
If we’re talking about the latter, the idea that they could somehow stop you from taking the food home seems strange to me - though I guess they don’t have to provide you with a container with which to do so if they don’t want to.
That could be like the old “Waiter, there is something wrong with my soup” joke.
Customer: Waiter, I would like to take this home.
Waiter: That sounds like an excellent idea Madam.
Customer: Well, where are the doggie bags?
Waiter: Aha. Aha!
As long as it isn’t an all you can eat buffet, I think you should be able to take any leftovers home.
That said, nothing wrong with providing your own take home containers. I’ve been taking a couple of containers along when I go out to eat for the past few years. No wasted packaging, and I can pack the food the way I want it packed.
I don’t know the answer. I suspect that yes you do own it, however the restaurant is under no obligation to provide you with a means of taking the food home. In NZ the legal question wont be settled until someone tests the practice in court. Or maybe that has already been done.
Most (or at least a large number) restaurants in Australia don’t do doggy bags, unless they also operate a take out option.
Health regulations leave it up to the establishment, so there’s no obligation either way. As Richard said above, you may own the food but the restaurant has no obligation for them to provide containers.
There’s several reasons why they don’t like doing it, apart from the argument that the food won’t taste as good reheated, there’s also the possibility of you letting it spoil by not getting it into the fridge quickly enough.
if you take a couple of plastic takeaway containers with lids with you, and scrape your own leftovers into them, I can’t see how they can stop you leaving with them.
In regard to the other part of the main question, when I go to a restaurant to eat it’s usually as much for the experience as for the food. I’d rarely get something to eat that i couldn’t cook myself at home but it’s nice not having to do all the work and just order what you want.
When I dine out, I’m paying for the sullen servitude of the waitstaff.
As for the no-doggy-bag rule: 1) unless New Zealanders are incredibly litigious or lack refrigeration, the “food poisoning” justification is bullshit, and 2) such a policy has a snowball’s chance in hell of catching on in the U.S. unless someone wants to start a monumental food fight (literally).
It seems like a silly OP, but in ‘all you can eat’ restaurants in the US you aren’t paying for the food cause you typically aren’t allowed to take any home with you.
Hmmm…
In New Zealand, what is the legal responsibility of restaurants regarding food purchased in the building versus take out or deliveries?
That seems like critical ‘need to know’ information.
It’s primarily for the food, but it’s also the experience in the sense that I like trying new and different restaurants and cuisines I’m unfamiliar with, so I guess that would qualify as experience, wouldn’t it? I don’t really care about atmosphere or service that much. That just needs to be passable. I mean, it feels nice to get pampered every once in a long while, but if I had to choose I’d rather get great food served by a surly staff than mediocre food by an unfailingly polite one. But reality is usually not that extreme.
At a high end restaurant is it the experience, including the chef and his/her dishes prepared to be consumed at the proper time. HOWEVER the number of restaurants that this applies to is about 500 in the world. All the rest it is food they are selling along with some service. Not allowing a take home bag, well that’s a place that’s too puffed up for their own good as those 50 places would certainly do that.
Seriously? Tell me, then: Do supermarkets in Australia also make you eat everything in the store, too? After all, there’s the the possibility of you letting it spoil by not getting it into the fridge quickly enough.
This. Unless there is something weird about the food in question that means it is unexpectedly susceptible to becoming unsafe (and the restaurant fails to warn you of this), the restaurant is not going to have liability for anything that happens to the food after it leaves their care. It’s BS.
Also, for the record, in NZ they have a no fault injury liability scheme. I don’t know a great deal about it other than that as a consequence there is no personal injury litigation in NZ so unless there is some reason that this situation falls outside the scheme, the whole thing is a nonsense.