Royal Host Family Restaurant Allows Diners to Bring Leftover Food Home

It has bothered me a LOT that most Japanese restaurants do not allow customers to bring their leftovers home, even if they had paid for the food already (at a restaurant that is not all you can eat). The excuses have always seemed poor to me.

"Well, it is for food safety." Hell, no. You can get sushi as takeouts in the middle of summer, so that is definitely not it. I have NEVER once bought into that lame excuse.

"Well, they do not have containers ready." Since some restaurants do takeouts, they DO have containers, and I am sure some customers would be happy to bring their own. Moreover, what if I bring my own containers? The answer would still have been no.

There are other excuses I have heard over the years, but regardless, I am really glad to see that since October this year Royal Host has been taking action, allowing customers to bring home their leftovers in order to tackle the problem of food waste, a rather big problem in Japan.

I see that they have a lot of incentives in doing so as well, besides decreasing food waste.

For customers with families, I can definitely see this being a way to encourage them to order more food. If a kid wants one thing while another kid wants another, and they know they could not finish them by themselves, the old reason of "we do not want to waste food" is now removed as they could always just pack them home. They could end up ordering more things than before.

Some restaurants also have a requirement that each customer order at least one item, which could be troublesome for kids with very small appetites who might have to get something that the parents end up forcing themselves to finish. Imagine how much better it would be if they could just bring it home?

A big part of eating out with your family is so that you can all share food and try different things. Without the worry of wasting food, I believe this policy will actually encourage families to order more things to enjoy.

The next problem then is of course the plastic waste instead. If families like mine back home would also keep a set of containers in the car in case we have food leftover, that would be great, but since this is Japan and "bringing my own container into the restaurant looks bad," the food waste problem will probably turn into plastic waste instead.