4 . In the worsening economic environment, restaurants a returning to sharing menus to stop hard up customers from cutting back on starters and desserts.
Expenses in restaurants have fallen by 14 percent, from £ 25.38 to £ 21.80 per head, in part because customers are having main courses only and skipping starters and desserts, the research firm Lumina Intelligence has found. This is also hitting receipts from drinks, with the number of meals including alcohol falling from 38.5 percent to 33.9 percent. “To increase profit, restaurants are introducing sharing dishes across courses, including starter and dessert dishes, to encourage customers to spend more,” according to Lumina Intelligence.
Linden Stores, a restaurant that is owned by Laura Christie and her husband and was relocated to the village of Audlem from London in 2020, started a whole new menu of modern British food, with two people sharing seven dishes recently. And, for Christie, it was really a bolt out of the blue. “I wasn’t expecting it to be such a hit,” said Christie. “It was quite a new idea for people. We’re in a small village but it turned out we were breaking more boundaries than we’d thought with this sharing concept.”
Linden Stores is not alone in rethinking its menu to make sharing food more commonplace. A large number of restaurants are following this, among which is El Pastor, a group of Mexican restaurants in London. Actually, stealing your partner’s dessert is a time-honoured restaurant tradition, but restaurant owners are increasingly offering two spoons as a matter of course as sharing food become the latest way for the hospitality industry to fight the recession (经济萧条).
Sharing works because restaurants have become less formal, Christie believes. “It makes people feel like they’re getting more of an experience. Sharing food offers a delicious and exciting way to put together history, culture, and love. It helps save diners’ spend per head. It also helps with the efficiency of restaurants, because you know what you’re having to prepare and you need fewer people to deliver it because you know, ahead of time, what you’re doing.”
1. What does the author intend to do in paragraph 2?
| A．Add some background information. | B．Describe people’s new food preference. |
| C．Introduce a new topic for discussion. | D．State restaurants’ effort to make a profit. |
2. What is the meaning of the underlined sentence in paragraph 3?
| A．Christie had a clear vision of what she really wanted to do. |
| B．Christie was shocked by the reaction to sharing menus. |
| C．Christie was in a totally disturbed state of mind. |
| D．Christie found it hard to encourage innovation. |
3. Why does the author mention El Pastor?
| A．To explain the tradition of sharing food. | B．To prove the success of Linden Stores’ reform. |
| C．To present attempts at fighting the recession. | D．To show sharing menus’ popularity with restaurants. |
4. What message is implied in Christie’s words at the end of the text?
| A．Food is a vital element of culture. | B．Advance preparation makes a big difference. |
| C．Sharing menus is a win-win thing. | D．Food sharing helps people bond together closely. |
