Sugar Free

Restaurant patrons often complain of being taken, but in inflationary 1974 it is the diners-out who are doing the taking. Not just ashtrays, but about everything `a la cartable, from cups and dishes and silverware to rolls, crackers and ketchup--even paper napkins and soap.

Diners are emptying salt shakers into plastic packages--or taking the shaker itself--for home consumption. Even at tony establishments run by Manhattan's Restaurant Associates, well-to-do customers are making off with people-bags filled with everything from fruit to nutcrackers.

Throughout the U.S., the biggest takeout item for restaurant rippers-off is sugar, which has had a price rise of 160% in the past seven months. Larry Buckmaster, executive director of the Chicago and Illinois Restaurant Association, reports that restaurants are having to order twice as much sugar as they did a year ago. A not unmixed blessing is that sugar-bitter restaurant owners are considering a return from the skimpy paper envelopes in which most now serve sugar to bowls and dispensers, which are not so easily slipped into pockets and handbags.

A more drastic solution was observed recently in a New Salem, Mass., diner where a regular breakfaster, having ordered his cereal and coffee, surveyed the counter and found it sugarless. Beckoning the proprietor, he asked genially what had become of the sweetening. After reaching behind the counter, the owner approached the customer, spoon in hand and sugar bowl protectively clutched to his bosom. "How many spoonfuls you want on your Wheaties?" came the grim question. "How many in the coffee?"

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