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>By the time we left there was probably 8 lbs of rice on the tray… can’t believe they weren’t kicked out.

Why should they be? It's likely that the restaurant still charged them for the full price of the plates that were removed from the belt, regardless of whether or not they ate everything that was on said plate.

If they're otherwise quiet, respectful and paying customers, what about picking apart their food warrants kicking them out? As another user suggested, what happens if you don't eat the crust at a pizza joint?

Edit: Since I'm getting a lot of similar replies here, I'll point out that OP has since clarified that the conveyor belt sushi joint that they went to, contrary to how they are usually run, did in fact charge a "flat fee" for access to the sushi train. Hence my confusion - this is a deviation from the norm.

Edit 2: Kinda interesting watching the up/downvote progression in this thread. My initial post, despite being incorrect, was decently upvoted. Now that I've clarified that I was wrong and tried to correct myself, I'm getting downvoted. Neat!



> the restaurant still charged them for the full price of the plate

At all-you-can-eat buffets, customers are charged a flat rate, not per plate.

Obviously this breaks down if people are taking plates of food and chucking them in the trash.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro2_bQkaG5U&t=84s


OP specifically specifies that this was a "conveyor-belt sushi" restaurant. Those are only "all you can eat" in the sense that you're welcome to pull as many plates as you'd like off of the belt, but each plate is usually priced at one of a few different levels, and you will be charged for the total value of the plates you removed from the belt.

Eg, if yellow plates are $1, blue plates are $2, and orange plates are $3, and you pulled two orange plates, a blue plate and a yellow plate, your total would come out to $9 even if you didn't clear your plates.


They clearly said it was all-you-can-eat and the behavior and reaction are very much fitting the context. Why are you assuming you know better than them the restaurant they went to?

Yes, flat-rate sushi conveys exist.


>Why are you assuming you know better than them the restaurant they went to?

OP clarified, and I thanked them for clarifying and acknowledged I was wrong. I've further mentioned as much in additional comments[1, 2, 3], and I've edited my original post to clear things up. Care to continue being snarky despite my attempts to correct myself?

>Yes, flat-rate sushi conveys exist.

And are, by and large, less common than per-plate joints, hence the confusion.

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38562397

[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38563087

[3]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38563030


“All you can eat” rarely means “you can eat as much as you can afford” but rather means “you pay one price and can eat as much as you like for that price”.

That a conveyor belt is involved doesn’t change the offer.


Correct. The confusion, as noted elsewhere in this comment chain, lies in the fact that most conveyor belt sushi joints are not all you can eat, and the format of the restaurant that OP went to is rare.


No, there is no confusion in the comment chain. YOU are confused.


Did you really show up to this comment chain two days later to repeatedly highlight how I'm wrong after I already corrected myself repeatedly throughout?

And if I am a part of this comment chain, and I am confused (admittedly so, I should remind you), is there not confusion in the comment chain? :)

Boy, you should probably step outside and touch some grass or, I dunno, maybe let stuff like this bother you a bit less. Yikes.

Edit: And no, contary to your suggestion, I'm pretty comfortable not deleting my comments - I don't mind publicly making a mistake and then owning it. Thanks for the thought, though! :)


That's not how this place works, and clearly it would have been less offensive behavior if it was.


Absolutely untrue in all states of Germany and Austria I've visited. People here would flip out if conveyor belt sushi was priced any other way but with a simple flat rate.

The entire world is not just Japan or the USA, please be respectful of this.


So either that isn't all-you-can-eat, or I don't understand the definition of all-you-can-eat.


The confusion, as clarified elsewhere between GP and I in this thread, lies in the fact that you don't usually see an actual "all you can eat conveyor belt sushi" restaurant - they traditionally charge by the plate but you're welcome to order as much as you want. In point of fact, the restaurant OP went to bucked that trend and was actually a flat-fee conveyor belt joint.


As far as I can tell, most conveyor belt sushi places charge by plate.

But most all-you-can-eat sushi places use a conveyor belt.


This will be amusing - how do you think conveyor sushi places charge if not by the plate?


This will be amusing - how did you make it this far into this chain, past my first comment that contained my edit explaining how I made this mistake? Unless you're just being a dick for the sake of being a dick, of course...


No, go ahead and answer the question. How does a kaiten sushi place charge for their food, Mr know it all?


Again - yikes.


I've visited two conveyor-belt sushi locations - one in Japan and one here in the US. The one in Japan followed the colored plate system, however the US one just worked off a flat $20 fee.


Completely wrong.


No this anecdote is about conveyor belt sushi, which in my experience is pay by the color coded plate


No, in this case, it was a flat rate up front.

Basically 100% a buffet except the table moves to you (which, to the point of the original article, waiting for your preferred sushi to come around probably slows down consumption and improves the economics)

Obviously if people want to buy food and waste it that's on them. But this was a pretty clear abuse of the restaurant's business model as well.


This place charged a flat fee at the door, then everything inside is all-you-can-eat.


Interesting, I've never seen that at a conveyor-belt sushi joint before. That's not how they traditionally operate.


There's a conveyor belt hot pot by me which does it both ways. You choose whether everyone at the table will do the normal method where they count up your plates and price based on the color, or pay a flat rate for however much you wish to eat. In the case of the latter, they reserve the right to tack on a fee if you're wasting food.


> Edit 2: Kinda interesting watching the up/downvote progression in this thread. My initial post, despite being incorrect, was decently upvoted. Now that I've clarified that I was wrong and tried to correct myself, I'm getting downvoted. Neat!

Because people didn't know you were wrong before, and it's usually good to make factually incorrect comments be gray.


Most all-you-can-eat places I've been to have rules against food waste.


it sounds like it was an all you can eat place, the few one I go to has signs up saying if you don't eat what you take you may be charged an extra plate (I've never seen them actually enforce it, I assume it's more for people who go make a giant bowl and then eat almost none of it).


Conveyor-belt sushi does not charge the same way a traditional "all you can eat" buffet restaurant charges. See my comment here[0].

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38562309


This one does/did.


WRONG.


Bears! Beets! Battlestar Galactica!




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