Which comes to mind a tau foo fah seller in pasar besar TTDI. If you were to take-away the tau foo fah, she won't give you the plastic spoon. The spoon costs an additional 5 cents. This was back in the late 90's. Wouldn't the price include that plastic spoon? At least you don't have to wash it and come on, how much does a plastic spoon cost anyway? Satay sellers put in satay stick into the cost. It's like buying a pre-packed nasi lemak and they charge you for the plastic you put the nasi lemak in. It's like Makro 'soft persuade' you to buy their plastic bag since you cannot possible cash and carry more than 10 items.
But here we're talking about food industry. I'm sure quite a lot of you would have noticed, and agree with me that if you tapau (take-away, bungkus) an iced milo at a mamak stall, the milo you get in your plastic bag is more than they put into the glass for dine-in clients. There was a time when I was kiasu, buying a bungkus milo ais, and then sit down, ask for empty glass. Free anyway, and yes, I get about 1.25 glass of milo from my bungkus-ed iced milo.
On the other hand, we have restaurants that add charges for plastic bags and the likes. It's nice enough to live in Malaysia than overseas where they charge 20cents a squirt of chilli sauce (personal experience in New Zealand) or 10 cents for salt/pepper in McD. The question is, is it more costly to the food hawker/restaurant to sell at take-away or dine-in? What are the 'costs' involved?
Dine-in requires the following: -
- Degradation of cloth to wipe table before and after you eat
- Water to wash your hands, your plates and forks and spoons
- Degradation of plates, forks, spoons, chairs and whatever you use
- Cost of soap and cleaning liquid for washing
- Labour cost for the above
- Lights and fan/aircond (I know this is used in general, but in a month, you can actually divide the expense of aircond against amount of customers)
Tapau requires the following: -
- Plastic bags cost, newspaper/plastic cost and sometimes
- Labour cost for wrapping
- Additional stuff cost ie wooden chopsticks, plastic forks and spoons
Seriously, I have no idea which costs more, but I think on a quantity basis, dine-in cost more but on a single customer basis, tapau costs more. So, while mamak stall have to absorb more cost when a customer buy iced milo, why do they give MORE iced milo? Which comes to the same for pre-cooked quick food like fried rice, fried kuey teow and the likes. Err... pre-cooked here means you just need to take it from the tray into your plate/tapau box. Good tapau box like those made in micro-wavable plastic is rather costly as compared to just a simple plastic. But Pizza hut gives spaghetti in that!
Back to topic, you place fried rice in your plate and you place fried rice in your tapau box, the price is the same but you get more in the tapau box. I guess we need to thank the makers of these tapau boxes, be it plastic or sterofoam (or however you spell it). They manage to trick the eye of food-sellers that since the size (width-span) of boxes is smaller than plates, tapau customers get less or somewhat same.
Just a quick summary. You eat McD, if you tapau, you get bonus paper bag, plastic bag, more tissues than you use when dine-in and more chilli sauces than you use when dine-in. You eat roti canai, if you tapau, you get bonus plastic, newspaper, plastic bag and more curry/dhal than you eat when dine-in. You eat yong tau fu, if you tapai, you get bonus plastic bags and more sauce than you get when dine-in. BUT, they cost more to the seller actually.
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