Lose £££s on Dishi Rishi’s 3:4 DIET
DISHI RISHI’S ‘Money For Nothing And Your Chips For Free’ deal has been a runaway success, depending on your point of view. More than 35million half-price meals have been served and the Chancellor is coming under pressure to extend the scheme beyond the end of August.
restaurants report record takings on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, when diners are eligible for a discount of up to £10 a head, courtesy of the British taxpayer.
Sunak’s £500 million injection has certainly given the Covid-crippled hospitality industry a much-needed shot in the arm.
Punters have been packing in to cafes, curry houses, fish and chip shops, pizza parlours and burger bars.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that when the discount ends at midnight on Wednesdays, business falls off a cliff.
Weekends, when you’d expect pubs and restaurants to be rocking and rolling, are eerily quiet in many areas.
Not only that, but some establishments have already pulled out of the scheme, which they accuse of attracting the ‘wrong kind’ of customer. Upscale restaurants have been besieged by riff-raff determined to take full advantage of half-price menus.
‘Oi, luv, double lobster and chips over here. And make it snappy!’
‘What do you mean, you’ve run out of caviar?’
(Sounds like that marvellous scene in The Blues Brothers, when Jake and elwood invade the dining room of a snooty hotel to persuade the maitre’d, Mr Fabulous, to rejoin the band. After offending the other, regular, diners — ‘How much for the little girl, for your women?’ — they threaten him: ‘If you say No, we will come here for breakfast, lunch and dinner, every day of the week.’)
restaurant owners complain about staff being abused by impatient punters who fail to appreciate they are being run off their feet because of the increased demand.
In Leicester, which was supposed to be in lockdown during the first two weeks of the scheme, police were called to break up huge crowds queueing at food outlets.
SOCIAL distancing guidelines have gone out of the window. Funny how people don’t mind cramming cheek-by-jowl into a cut-price kebab house, but are allegedly too frightened to go back to work.
Inevitably, greed has taken over. The maximum £10 discount was intended to apply to the total bill.
But some chancers have attempted cynically to play the system. The proprietor of a restaurant in Torquay said: ‘They are trying to get round it by ordering a starter, then asking for the bill; then ordering the main course after they’ve had the bill, so they get a double discount.’
Something which began as a modest, temporary stimulus, designed to put the hospitality sector back on its feet, is now viewed as an entitlement.
I’ve heard contributors to radio phone-ins boasting that they’re eating out three times a day Monday to Wednesday.
Is that all? It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there are thousands of gluttons waddling from one restaurant to another, filling their boots.
They kick off at breakfast with the full Scottish and follow up with coffee and cakes for elevenses, before it’s time for a four-course lunch. A quick snooze, then afternoon tea, chicken tikka masala for dinner and a sweaty doner kebab on the way home. If they play their cards right, they can ‘save’ £60 a day, Monday to Wednesday. That’s £180 a week, which isn’t to be sniffed at — especially if you’re on furlough, or ‘working from home’.
Treble Big Macs all round!
Despite the Government’s ban on junk food advertising, there’s no restriction on what you can buy. I don’t suppose a lot of quinoa is being shovelled down under this scheme.
A few years ago, I remember going to a chippie in Blackpool, round the back of the Imperial Hotel, which was offering a ‘recession Beater Special’, consisting of two beefburger patties and two slices of processed cheese in a large bap, dipped in batter, deep fried and served, naturally, with a generous helping of chips.
Never mind beating the recession, eat a couple of those coronarieson-a-bun and you’d be lucky to see the end of the recession.
If that chippie’s still in business, it’s probably offering the same delicacy as a ‘Covid Special’, complete with a complimentary can of full-fat Corona.
regular readers will know I’ve always had my doubts about the wisdom of rishi’s rash scheme.
Surely it would have been better to give the hospitality industry, say, a prolonged rates, National Insurance or corporation tax holiday and let cafes and restaurants decide for themselves how best to manage their businesses. Then they could have chosen to spread out any discounts across the week, rather than trying to pack everything into a three-day, Monday to Wednesday swill.
And how does subsidising fried chicken and chips for millions possibly fit in with the Government’s latest anti-obesity drive?
Now, though, I realise it’s a stroke of genius. rishi has invented a new diet, the 3:4 — modelled on the popular 5:2. Obviously, by encouraging people to eat out as much as they can between Monday and Wednesday, the hope is they’ll be too stuffed to face any more food until the scheme kicks in again.
By fasting for four days, those excess pounds will fall off, the remote chances of catching Covid will vanish altogether and Our Amazing NHS will be saved to fight another day. Brilliant. Pig Out To Help Out!