> I've noticed that the cheaper the hotel, the more free things they give you. Such as breakfast buffets.

Good. I'm cheap. I'm attracted to freebies. And I like being able to get up, get around to start my day, grab some food on my way out the door, and then get on with whatever it is that to me staying in a hotel to begin with.

I don't want to be at a hotel. That's not my destination; it's a means to an end that is necessary because hygiene and food are necessary even if I have to be away from home.

The buffet is fast. Fast is important to me.

> Rather than a buffet, they could give out a meal ticket. If you want extras, you can pay a small fee for those, meant to cover the cost of the food more than any profit motive.

A meal ticket? Like, for a restaurant with a menu?

The hotels I stay at don't have the facilities to do that. The free breakfast buffets I'm familiar with have stuff that is purchased in bulk, and served in bulk. It's meant to use as little labor as possible at every stage.

> Or is it really more profitable to just throw away the food?

Compared to keeping track of people, and their orders, and delivering that food? Yes, it is more profitable. People don't work for free.

With a meal ticket, when someone orders scrambled eggs or whatever and finds that they don't suit their taste, then they're still throwing them away. Similarly: If they get more food than they can eat? It still goes into the trash.

But now there's a customer service problem, too: When the person who didn't like the eggs is still hungry but their meal ticket is expended, they're going to be complaining about it. That's yet more labor.

Adding this complexity doesn't solve the food waste "problem" (it may actually make it worse), and it adds labor and facilities expense.

It's almost as if these things have all been tried before, and buffets came out on top in profitability.

And since it's a competitive market, customers have options. Fast is important to me so I don't want to wait around for food when there are alternatives that don't require me to do that. I'll just stay at the other cheap place across the road, instead.

It's more profitable for them when I give them my money than it is when I give their competitor my money instead.

(Breakfast buffets didn't appear from thin air. They evolved to be how they are because they're more profitable than other things that were tried before.)

How to make buffet breakfasts less wasteful