The humble side salad often occupies an unassuming place on the pub-meal plate.
For many, it's an obligatory component of a pub lunch, nestling between the chips and the schnitzel.
Even if we don't actually end up eating our greens, we might like the option of having them there.
But for pubs, it's a different story — while we reserve the right to be fickle, they fork out regardless.
The Duke of Brunswick publican Simone Douglas said her venue was filling up an entire garbage bin with side salads that nobody was eating.
Amid the rising cost of lettuces and other groceries, some venues are now asking that patrons who know they definitely won't be eating the salad to let them know in advance.
"The advice that's going around on social media at the moment is if you don't really like it, ask not to have it," Ms Douglas said.
"It actually saves the venue some money but it also saves them throwing out a lot of material and waste.
"If you're a venue that is trying to reduce your footprint, and your waste as a whole, and being environmentally sustainable … then that's something you need to look at."
Side salads a 'divisive issue'
While Adelaide restaurateur Frank Hannon-Tan isn't yet looking at taking greens off the plate, the problem of untouched salads being scraped into bins or turned into compost is something he's all too familiar with.
"It's a divisive issue," he said.
"You've really got to tread carefully there."
He said while salads wouldn't be ending any time soon, the rising cost of basic foodstuffs — especially lettuce, but also meat and seafood — couldn't be ignored.
"It's certainly had an effect across all the venues," Mr Hannon-Tan said.
He said iceberg lettuce was gaining a lot of attention.
"It's a non-seasonal product so I guess we've been trying to focus on more seasonal products and more winter vegetables," he said.
"We're looking to adapt, so, with the salads, mixing in different types of leaves."
University of South Australia dietitian Karen Murphy said making salads less accessible had obvious nutritional downsides.
"Remove that [salad] from meals and I really think you're going to reduce the intake of fruit and veg for our population," she said.
Associate Professor Murphy said one way pubs could try to compromise was by following Mr Hannon-Tan's suggestion and moving towards different foodstuffs that were equally nutritional without being less affordable.
"We eat with our eyes, don't we? It needs to look appetising and you need to want to eat it," she said.
"You can get quite creative with a range of veggie foods — rockets and spinaches, you could even put some grains in there as well."
'We waste so much food'
Ms Douglas said her venue had shifted away from serving salads alongside schnitzels as a matter of course even before the COVID-19 pandemic began playing havoc with pub budgets.
She said treating a good salad as an extra — at an added, but not exorbitant, cost — might be the most agreeable option for pubs battling rising overheads.
"When we took the side salad off as part of the inclusion, it just meant we could maintain a lower price for the schnitzels and everything else," she said.
Associate Professor Murphy said she understood the predicament that pubs found themselves in and agreed there wasn't an easy solution.
"We waste so much food, so I absolutely I can understand why the pubs would be doing this," she said.
