Restaurant in China apologizes for asking customers to weigh themselves

A restaurant in China apologized following a social media outcry after it started asking customers to weigh themselves before ordering.

According to BBC News, the beef restaurant, in Changsha, brought two scales out on Friday after the start of the Clean Plate Campaign, a highly publicized national drive against food waste which has been partly sparked by a social media phenomenon where people livestream themselves eating a large amount of food.

Diners were asked to weigh themselves and then enter their info into the restaurant’s app which in turn offered menu suggestions in order to keep the customers’ orders reasonable.

Signs reading “be thrifty and diligent, promote empty plates” and “operation empty plate” were also hung inside the restaurant.

After the restaurant was widely criticized on social media platform Weibo, the restaurant said it was only trying to help.

“Our original intentions were to advocate stopping waste and ordering food in a healthy way. We never forced customers to weigh themselves,” the restaurant said.

The Clean Plate Campaign was started after President Xi Jinping described amount of food being wasted in China as “shocking and distressing” after the coronavirus pandemic and mass flooding led to shortages in some parts of the country.