Banning olive oil cruets on restaurant tables – Legislating for a perfect world? Yeah, that’ll work.
admin | June 30, 2013“The upshot was restaurants would have to spend a small fortune buying in specially prepared bottles of tamper-proof olive oil to serve to customers, many of whom had never realised there was a problem in the first place”;The Daily Telegraph UK 26th May 2013
Recently the European Commission on Agriculture put forward plans to ban refillable containers containing olive oil on restaurant tables, insisting they be replaced with unopened labelled bottles with tamper proof seals. The ban was immediately rescinded after considerable consumer and media backlash particularly from the non olive producer nations. Presumably the ban was proposed to in an effort to eliminate the practice of restauranters diluting their extra virgin olive oil at the point of ‘sale’. I have italicised ‘sale’ because in most cases olive oil is given away by the restauranteur which is a point that the proponents of the ban seemed to have not adequately considered.
Before I begin, I declare that I am relaying some experiences from an Australian context. However, I cannot see why my arguments would not stand up in the context of European restaurants where the regulations were to apply.
I have two friends ‘M&M’ who co-own a busy café in Adelaide, Australia. When I say, busy I mean the bustling, noisy type with each table hosting 3 covers (different customers) a night. The café like many others like them, offers a diverse range of cuisines including Mediterranean and also offer complementary good genuine extra virgin olive oil for customers as an alternative to butter.
Like many local restaurateurs, they source their extra virgin olive oil from a local producer – from the McLaren Vale region, 30km from the city. They know the producer personally and have used his oils for some years. They trust him, and have no reason not to. I also know him and he is a fair bloke who is understandably proud of the EVOO’s that he produces. By selling in bulk he can profitably supply M&M with quantities of oil at good price.
I asked M the hypothetical question. “What if the Government insisted that you had to serve the extra virgin olive oil to tables in small unopened labelled bottles so that the customer could be certain that you weren’t ripping them off?”
She looked at me almost quizzically and calmly answered …. “I wouldn’t” (serve it at all)
(the rest I paraphrase, because I was just another customer and they were very busy)
R: Why wouldn’t you?
M: Hey, I give this stuff away for free. It costs me money. I don’t have to do it. I’m sure if I didn’t offer it, and put butter in its place, very few people if any would push my buttons over it.
R: But surely olive oil is an important ingredient and part of the overall culture of eating?
M: Both I and my chefs love extra virgin olive oil and the flavours that the oils brings, but the restaurant biz is difficult. Margins are tight. We look carefully at every menu item, and every input – costing it out carefully. Is it necessary? Are there less expensive alternatives? What impact does it have on the bottom line? Because ultimately, unless you can make a living out of the business you just shut your doors. And one thing for sure, I don’t owe olive oil producers or any other ingredient supplier a living.
Now I’m pretty sure that when the European Parliament who immediately asked the European Commission to go back to the drawing board and consult with consumer groups and restaurant owners, that the above conversation is the sort they had in mind.
So what effect would a policy of having to use labelled unopened bottles rather than dispensing oil into bowls or cruets?
For the small producer, selling in bulk is often the only way in which they can make a decent return. Having to bottle, tamper-proof seal and label adds a significant cost, and as every producer knows, the relative cost of package to its contents increases as the package volume decreases. These additional costs will eventually have to be passed onto the restaurant either in part or in full. Given that most restaurants do not charge for the olive oil they serve, clearly having to pay more would be rather unpalatable and could potentially lead to EVOO being replaced.
To M&M the idea of having small bottles around the café also makes no sense. There is the issue of storage and increased waste handling and costs associated with disposal. “We’ve got enough sh*t to get rid of each night, why would I want any more”.
So what about the argument that having a branded bottle in front of the restaurant customer will promote the producers brand and lead to additional sales. I think it would be naïve to think that many restaurant customers would care enough to take much notice. Furthermore, most small producers have limited or no retail outlets outside their farm gate or local market, so even if a restaurant customer cared to notice the brand of the oil, I would presume that the chances of them chasing down a bottle the day after is very unlikely. But yes, it is possible that it could lead to sales, but the costs of compliance would probably outweigh the small marketing advantages gained.
So why was the regulation proposed in the first place?
The official line is that it was introduced in an attempt to eliminate fraud in the restaurant trade.
However the measure does not address the biggest cause of fraud. That is the adulteration, or misrepresentation of the EVOO BEFORE it was packaged and supplied to the restaurant. While supporters of the proposed regulation will argue that having a bottle identified by a label will discourage this, I would argue that such measures have not stopped adulteration or passing off poor quality oil at the supermarket retail level where similar labelling requirements exist. So why would the measure work at the restaurant level? Unless policing occurs via chemical testing then the problem will persist.
I would also argue that the regulation implies that the major cause of adulteration in the food services industry is the restaurateur. Such beliefs only serve to deflect scrutiny from up-stream sections of the distribution chain.
Also being somewhat of a cynic, I noted that things of this magnitude don’t happen in the olive world very often, and nothing happens on a broad institutional level unless the big olive oil marketing conglomerates support it.
Who would most likely profit from such a policy change? In short, packagers- and specifically those with the technical capability of bottling to the stringent specifications that were being called for. And who are the big packagers? Answer: The vertically integrated companies that buy oil in bulk before blending, bottling and marketing them under the well known supermarket brand names. I also wonder what share of the restaurant market they currently have? My guess is less than they would like.
And where would this stop? What about opened bottles of wine served by the glass? I’ve been to plenty of eating establishments where the wine tasted like it had been opened for a while. I’ve politely brought the issue to the attention of the server, and they have replaced the glass of wine with that from a freshly opened bottle. No problems. Will opened bottles of wine be banned next? Unlabelled pepper?
I’m all for cleaning up the EVOO industry of fraudulent practices, but realistically was this the right way of going about it? I think not. The idea reeked of an industry looking inwardly, rather than to the needs of its customers. It really was pretty dumb.