A company that supplies wooden and bamboo forks, knives and spoons to restaurants on Monday said price has become a far less significant factor for eateries when making purchases of cutlery.

“Maybe I can use the knife as an example. At the beginning people are just concerned about the price. They choose a wooden knife and fork but because of the functionality of the wood it cannot cut like a harder steak. So people now choose the bamboo fork and knife which can be used to cut the steak easily,” Alvis Yip, founder of Supply Ching Company said.

He said his products were initially about 20 percent to 30 percent more expensive than the plastic ones, but his prices have now dropped by about 10 percent, benefiting from economies of scale.

Yip was one of four suppliers invited by the Environmental Protection Department to showcase their products to the press six months ago.

During the event, another supplier demonstrated how its knife and fork can be used to cut steak, but the fork snapped during two attempts.

Asked whether the issue affected his sales in any way, Yip said it actually gave customers more confidence in his products.

“At the beginning we were concerned about that incident, that will it affect the reputation of sustainable food packaging. But after that event it kind of benefits us because while the citizens are often laughing at the presentation, the restaurants are actually more concerned about the functionality. That event created chances or situations for us to explain more of our products' details to our customers,” he said.

Yip said he also noticed a significant drop in reliance on one-off cutlery as people adapt to more sustainable options, but stressed he is not worried about his sales.

“It’s like that restaurants are preparing for, for example, 10,000 sets of cutlery because they are using the assumption from plastic cutlery, but then they end up just using 5,000 for a month. So monthly usage can drop by 50 percent,” he said.

“But I can draw more customers using our quality and new designs and new materials by increasing our functionalities… We will just have some good quality supplies left in the market in the end.”