Thinner the customer, fatter the discount. There may be more to it than ‘body-shaming’. 

 The thinner the customer, the fatter the discount: This appears to be the business strategy adopted by a cafe in Thailand, which is making customers slide through the gaps between strategically placed bars to get a “skinny discount”. As per a recent viral video, the width of each gap determines the size of the discount a customer may score, with 20 per cent for the narrowest and zero for the widest.

In thus reminding blissfully blinkered customers of how much their waistlines may have expanded, is the restaurant “fat-shaming them”, as a section of the internet alleges? Or is it, in a benevolent gesture, reminding them to take care of themselves, as some others have argued? Whatever the motive of the Chiang Mai eatery, the fact is that nobody eats out for their health, and few like to be reminded of this. This is the secret compact, beyond the guarantee of a good time and a delicious meal, that keeps the restaurant industry running in a time of extreme health — or, rather, fat — consciousness. 

But the Thai cafe is not the first to pander to the near-universal obsession with wellness with a view to fattening its own profile and bottom line. For a while now, restaurants around the world, in deference to the near-universal obsession with “wellness”, have been printing in their menus the calorie count of every item: About 403 kcal in a plate of pasta, 365 kcal in a serving of fries and 250 kcal in one bowl of ice cream. As a tactic, it is the equivalent of having one’s cake (430 kcal per slice if it’s eggless, 355 if not) and eating it too. Customers are comforted by this acknowledgment of their anxieties, and the eateries get to wash off — at least to some extent — the taint of the late Anthony Bourdain’s infamous quip about butter being the first and last thing in “just about every pan in a restaurant”.