A sandwich business has said it will offer its customers “seagull insurance” because of the numbers of customers having their food stolen by the birds.
The Cheesy Toast Stack in St Andrews said it was becoming unsustainable to offer free replacements for the stolen food - so customers are instead being offered £1 ‘insurance’ on food.
The gourmet sandwich business told The Telegraph that the problem of dive-bombing seagulls had escalated in recent summer months.
Founder Sam Larg, 39, told the publication: “If food gets stolen, we’ll always replace it. It felt cold-hearted not to but I don’t know how long it’s sustainable to keep giving away lunch after lunch for free.
“Some days we’re replacing 10 sandwiches. We’ve been in business for 10 years and it’s never been as bad as it has this summer, it’s got completely out of hand.
“So we’re just trying to find a way of dealing with the situation. We think offering insurance is probably a good idea because some of the customers actually feel bad about taking freebies.
“We’re thinking of introducing the insurance and if we’re in profit from it at the end of the summer, we’ll donate it to the local football club or local charities.”
It comes after a study found that even though seagulls might like to steal punters’ sandwiches, they still prefer their natural diet of raw fish.
Given a choice, chicks raised on an “urban” diet of bread and cat food showed more interest in meals that would normally come through foraging, such as mackerel and sprat.
Emma Inzani, from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation on Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall, said: “Even when reared on an ‘urban’ diet of foods found only around people, these chicks might be unlikely to seek out urban foods as adults.
“Human-associated foods are often both reliably present and easy to obtain – but when fish is available they clearly prefer it.”
She said reduced fish numbers in UK waters mean “it is not as profitable for gulls to spend a lot of energy going out to sea to forage” - meaning they target humans eating food instead.
