food industry waste

Food waste is a massive problem in our society. It’s most apparent across the restaurant industry.

Restaurant food waste is tilted toward larger players. Research shows between 4% - 10% of food purchased by restaurant leaders never gets to customers and instead ends up in landfills, totaling approximately $1,000 of the company’s revenue per 3.3 lb of food waste.

Food costs typically make up the bulk of restaurant expenses — especially these days with supplier prices increasing. 

While operators have plenty of methods and procedures to better control food costs, they must implement waste controls to increase restaurant cost controls and maximize profitability. As your food waste decreases, your restaurant’s profitability increases. It’s a win-win.

Read on to explore the common causes of restaurant food waste, how to reduce it, and how to track waste events so you know exactly where money is being lost.

Incorrect or inconsistent kitchen training can lead to larger portion sizes than planned. As much as it may please customers to have leftovers to bring home, you risk creating more waste—and losing valuable margin on the plates. 

Food spillage is quite common in restaurants. It can include anything from a server dropping a tray of food in the dining room during food service to a prep cook accidentally knocking over their cutting board. Those mistakes, no matter how small, can add up to large monetary losses. 

Refires occur when a plate of food is sent back to the kitchen and needs to be remade. Maybe a diner received the incorrect order, they failed to mention they’re allergic to something, or the food wasn’t prepared to their liking. Whatever the reason for the refire, it’s costing your kitchen twice as much to make one plate. 

Though some restaurants have successfully implemented zero-waste and sustainability policies to reduce waste and food costs, it’s not the industry norm. It’s more realistic to take small steps in every corner of the kitchen to set the expectation that everyone is responsible for reducing excess food.

Food scraps and excess that can’t be repurposed can be considered for composting instead. If you have space, use composted leftover food to create nutrient-rich soil that can support the growth of your own herb and vegetable garden.

Remember, it’s better to reduce food waste upfront than find ways to eliminate it after it’s already been created. 

For example, prep cooks should know how to correctly cut, clean, trim, and portion food, and servers should always ask about customer preferences and allergies up front to eliminate refires. Proper team training can go far in reducing food waste at a restaurant.

To reduce the amount of spoilage in your restaurant, use the first-in, first-out method, also known as FIFO.

In a FIFO-compliant kitchen, inventory will be organized and rotated so that the oldest items in your kitchen will be used first, cutting down on food waste as a result of spoiling.

Say you received a shipment of hamburger buns on Monday, and again on Wednesday. According to the FIFO method, the hamburger rolls received on Monday will be used first.

Adhering to the FIFO method may mean shipments take a little longer to unload, but moving the older stock to the front of the shelves and putting the new stock behind it will ensure that you are not wasting good product and throwing out unused food simply because of your order of consumption. However, it’s still important to follow food safety laws and make sure the older food you’re using first is safe for consumption.

Proper recipe management in restaurants will give you the yield, or batch size, that each recipe creates. Knowing what each recipe yields is an important step both in calculating plate costs and maintaining correct and consistent portion sizes.

Manual recipe management is complicated and prone to human error, but recipe management software helps you create, cost, and manage recipe yield with ease. Use it to accurately convert all ingredients in your kitchen to the units of measurement your staff uses to cook, along with correctly calculating proper yields for each dish. Share recipes across locations to ensure each dish is the same size and flavor, no matter where your customer consumes it.

You should also train kitchen staff to make each recipe exactly as it’s written, including its final serving size. Using consistent measurements and portions will help eliminate surplus food.

Make sure that all food items are placed in proper storage areas in appropriate containers and at the optimum temperature. 

Label all perishable products with the date they were received, the date they should be considered expired, and the amount of servings within each container. In some kitchens, staff will use a color-coded labeling system to make it easier for BOH staff to know what category of item is in which container.

You may have an item that traditionally does really well in your restaurant, but at certain times of the year, you notice yourself tossing more than expected. This can be due to the seasonality of produce.

Avocados, for example, have a peak season in the US from May to August. If you’re getting the same number of avocados from the same distributor all year long, there may be some batches that are quicker to go bad, resulting in thrown out product.

Whether you choose to restructure your menu around produce seasonality or simply purchase less produce that’s out of season, you can make sure that you’re always offering the freshest items all year long and won’t be throwing out so much unused food.