RESTAURANT DYNASTY
Restaurant Dynasty
Almost half of the food produced in US is
destined for landfills
Por favour, espere un momento!
Do we still need unfit restaurants in order to
resolve food shortage for starving?
"If food was as expensive as a Ferrari, we would polish it
and look after it."
Instead, we waste staggering amounts.
So says Professor Per Pinstrup-Andersen, head of an independent
panel of experts advising the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization on how to
tackle the problem.
Some 40% of all the food produced in the United States is never
eaten. In Europe, we throw away 100 million tonnes of food every year.
And yet there are one billion starving people in the world.
The FAO's best guess is that one third of all food produced for
human consumption is lost or wasted before it is eaten.
Food waste
33% of all food is wasted
$750bn cost of waste food
28% of farmland grows food
that will be thrown away
6-10% of greenhouse gases come
from waste food
39% of household food waste
is fruit and vegetables
Source: UN/FAO
SPL
The latest report from the expert panel of the UN Committee on World
Food Security concludes that food waste happens for many different reasons in
different parts of the world and therefore the solutions have to be local.
In rich countries, supermarkets, consumers and the catering industry
are responsible for most wasted food. But supermarkets have come under
particular pressure to act.
UK supermarket chain Waitrose is attacking food waste in all
parts of its business. The upmarket grocery chain cuts prices in order to sell
goods that are close to their "sell by" date, donates leftovers to
charity and sends other food waste to bio-plants for electricity generation.
The idea is for Waitrose to earn "zero landfill" status.
But then there are consumers like Tara Sherbrooke. A busy, working
mother of two young children, she works hard to avoid wasting food but still
finds herself throwing some of it away.
"I probably waste about £20 worth of food every week,"
she says. "It's usually half-eaten packets of food that have gone past
their 'best before' date."
In the UK, studies have shown that households throw away about
seven million tonnes of food a year, when more than half of it is perfectly
good to eat.
Part of the problem is poor shopping habits, but the confusion
many consumers have with "use by" and "best before" food
labels is also a factor. "Use by" refers to food that becomes unsafe
to eat after the date, while "best before" is less stringent and
refers more to deteriorating quality.
Plus, as Prof Pinstrup-Andersen points out, food in wealthy
countries takes up only a relatively small proportion of income and so people
can afford to throw food away.
In developing countries, the problem is one not of wealth but of
poverty.
In India's soaring temperatures fruit and vegetables do not stay
fresh on the market stall for long. Delhi has Asia's largest produce market and
it does have a cold storage facility.
But it is not big enough and rotting food is left out in piles.
There is not enough investment in better farming techniques, transportation and
storage. It means lost income for small farmers and higher prices for poor
consumers.
In terms of calories, farmers harvest the equivalent of 4,600
calories of food per person per day. But on average only 2,000 of those
calories are actually eaten every day - meaning more than half the calories we
produce are lost on their way from farm to dinner fork.
There is enough food for everyone, just a lot of inefficiency,
the FAO report concludes.
The environmental impact of all this wasted food is enormous.
The amount of land needed to grow all the food wasted in the world each year
would be the size of Mexico.
The water used to irrigate wasted crops would be enough for the
daily needs of nine million people. And wasted production contributes 10% to
the greenhouse gas emissions of developed countries.
Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Brooklyn, New York,
is one project trying to reverse that environmental damage.
The plant takes food scraps from local schools and restaurants
and converts them into energy. Inside towering, silver eggs food waste is mixed
with sewage sludge to create usable gas.
The pilot programme is particularly timely. New York City's
restaurants will be required to stop sending food waste to landfills in 2015
and will have to turn to operations like these as alternatives.
So progress is being made. Waste food is high on the agenda
politically and environmentally.
But there is still much more work to be done. As Prof
Pinstrup-Andersen admits: "We don't really know how much food is being
wasted. We just know it's a lot."
Ways to Reduce Food Waste in Your Restaurant
Running a foodservice operation requires a lot of thinking. You
have to order ingredients on time, balance your finances, and manage your staff
amidst a world of other concerns. As important as it is to consider what food
you’re making, it’s equally important to think about what happens to food that’s
left uneaten. According to Feeding America, America produces an estimated 70 billion tons of food
waste each year.
This is something your customers care about, as demonstrated by
food waste statistics. A study by Unilever, revealed that 72% of U.S. diners said that they care
about how food waste is handled. 47% are concerned enough that they would be
willing to spend more money to eat at a place that actively tries to reduce its
food waste production. This makes it all the more important to find ways of
reducing food waste in America.
What is a Food Waste Audit?
The first step to reducing waste is to find out how much you’re
wasting to begin with and what kind of waste your establishment is producing.
The primary goal of a waste audit is to identify where your operation's waste
comes from, so you can then find ways to reduce it.
How to Conduct a Food Waste Audit
There are two main factors to take into account as you track
your food waste. You need to consider how much food is being wasted and how
many people are coming through your restaurant. By gathering data for both of these
variables, you can get a better sense of what your biggest source of waste is.
Food log system
Provide your staff with a simple sheet of paper where they can
keep track of what's being thrown out, why it's being thrown out, and how much
is wasted. As an alternative, there are waste tracking systems like LeanPath that use a specially
designed scale with touch screen terminal and computer software to track how
much food you're throwing out without the hassle of a pencil and paper.
Also, be sure to keep a second log system for post-consumer
waste, or food customers pay for but don’t eat. This type of waste is much more
difficult to control because, ultimately, if that toddler at table 3 doesn't
want the broccoli his mom ordered for him, odds are good that you're going to
get it back, untouched, when they leave. Still, it's well worth evaluating what
is being thrown out and how much this amounts to. Gathering as much data as
feasibly possible will only help you when it comes time to evaluate the results
and make changes to how your operation handles food waste.
Traffic log system
Another common tool that many restaurants use is a daily log of
how much traffic the restaurant received and what the weather was like. For
example, a log may show that 280 guests were served on the Friday before
Christmas and the weather was 50 degrees and sunny. While this data may not
seem useful right away, it’s immensely helpful when it comes to planning for
the following year’s customer volume. If chefs can get a baseline of how much
traffic to expect, based on the previous year’s findings, they will have a
better sense of how much food to order. As years go by, this data becomes more
and more valuable because the trends become clearer. Many POS systems feature
daily log capabilities, so it’s definitely something to look for when you
choose a POS for your business.
Seek Food Waste Solutions
Once you know what’s being wasted, talk to your staff and try to
think of ways to improve. What are the biggest contributors to food waste in
your kitchen? Why are specific items thrown out? These are the questions that
should be in the back of your mind as you look at the data.
An easy way to think about next steps is to break up your waste
types into three categories: Pre-consumer waste - food that doesn’t even leave
the kitchen
Post-consumer waste - food that’s purchased by a customer, but
not eaten
Disposables - things like paper goods, plastic utensils, and
packaging
Next, consider the following options and determine which ways
make the most sense to implement as solutions to each type of waste:
Ways to Reduce Pre-Consumer Food Waste
Pre-consumer waste is the area where you likely have the most
opportunity for positive change because there are many factors within your
control when it comes to ordering, storing, and prepping your ingredients as
well as how you handle surplus ingredients.
Evaluate inventory - If you find that food sits around too long
in storage, make sure you’re not ordering too much.
Maximize shelf life - If ingredients you need are going bad
before you have a chance to use them, make sure perishables are being properly
stored so that you’re not wasting ingredients before they are even cooked.
Find ways of repurposing ingredients - Try making day-old bread
into croutons, or put leftover turkey meat into a soup. Similarly, an
innovative chef will be able to transform excess ingredients into a daily
special.
Train staff to reduce waste - Make sure your staff knows how
much ingredients cost. Train them to treat each ingredient as if they bought it
with their own money. Proper preparation techniques also help to reduce waste
of perfectly good food.
Keep your stock organized - Make sure that your perishables are
getting used in a timely manner by developing a refrigerator rotation system.
Many restaurants call this the "first in, first out," system. Use
stickers with the packaging date clearly written, or Use First" written in
large letters to help staff to recognize exactly which products need to be used
quickly to prevent spoilage.
Offer staff meals - If there’s just a small amount of
ingredients left that won’t be enough for another dinner service, you can give
it to your staff for free. Feeding your staff raises morale and prevents good
food from being thrown away.
Consider donating food - If you have items that are still safe
for consumption but, for one reason or another, can’t be used, a local food
bank may appreciate your contribution to feeding people in your community.
Programs like Feeding America make it easy to put those unsellable leftovers to
good use. Food banks will sometimes even come to your establishment and pick up
food for free, and you can claim these charitable donations on your tax return.
Food scraps can be used for animal feed- Many local farmers will
provide low cost or free pickup for food scraps, which can be fed to hogs or
other animals. If you go this route, you will want to make sure you are
following any local, state, or federal regulations on what can and can't be
used for animal feed. It presents another chance to help out the local economy
while cutting back on your own food waste at the same time. The EPA offers a guide covering some additional ways to do this.
Ways to Reduce Post-Consumer Waste
There’s not much you can do with food once it’s left your
kitchen, but you can make sure that you’re presenting guests with necessary information
and proper portion sizes, so your customers know what to expect and can eat
until they are comfortably full.
• Monitor portion sizes- If
your portions are too big for customers to finish, try a portion scale or some portion spoons to make sure that your customers are getting an
appropriate amount of food. Standardizing recipes is one way of ensuring
that every member of your staff is plating the same amount of food every time.
•
•
• Manage customer
expectations - Guests will be less likely to send a dish back if it’s been
completely and accurately described on the menu. Make sure your wait staff can
explain every item on the menu and answer any questions that guests may have.
• Track the popularity of
each dish - If certain menu items are unpopular, you might want to consider
adjusting the recipe or removing it from the menu.
• Encourage guests to take
their food home with them - This is a pretty standard practice at most
restaurants. Make sure you keep a variety of disposable containers on hand, so
guests can take home whatever they can’t finish.
Disposables
While the use of disposables aids in reducing food waste in
restaurants, they are inherently designed to be thrown away, so be mindful of
which disposables you choose and try to think of ways around using them
whenever possible.
• Set Up Customer
Incentives - If you own a cafe or convenience store, you can set up a discount
for customers who bring their own to-go mugs.
• Try Compostable Products
- If there’s absolutely no way around using disposable items, try to choose
items that are biodegradable whenever possible.
Alternative Waste Disposal Options
For those food items that are simply not destined for
consumption or for plastics, cardboard, and cans, consider alternative ways of
disposing your waste that doesn’t bury them in a landfill. Composting - If you
are fortunate enough to have the space, you can compost on site. If you don't
have the space to run your own composting program, finding a composter to take
your scraps can still be more a cost-effective alternative to the traditional
disposal methods. Essentially all you have to do is separate out compost-worthy
material from the regular "garbage".
Composting centers are still
gaining ground and therefore not as widespread as traditional landfills, but
resources like findacomposter.com make it easy to find a site near you. If composting
sounds like a real possibility for managing waste at your establishment, you
can find out all the details in our article all about restaurant composting.
• Recycling - Recycling is
a simple way to deal with plastic, cardboard, and glass waste that cannot be
avoided, and many restaurants already implement it to reduce their
environmental footprints. For more details about recycling, refer to our restaurant recycling guides
Schedule Regular Check-Ins to Monitor Food
Waste
It’s important to assess your food waste regularly so that you
can constantly monitor trends and implement any changes that may be necessary.
No matter how delicious your recipe is, certain dishes can sometimes simply
fall out of fashion as customers seek different, newer options. Staff members
may move on, so you’ll have new employees to train and manage. There are so
many factors that may contribute to increased waste within your carefully
thought-out system, so checking in on them is just part of the process of
reducing food waste in your restaurant.
Making Alternative Waste Disposal Work For You
There can be many benefits to using alternative waste disposal
methods, both environmental and financial. However, not every method will be a
good fit for every restaurant. Luckily, the EPA offers handy tools for monitoring food waste management that can give you an
idea of how cost effective some of the above methods can be and which ones
could be a good fit for your business.
Even if your business seems to have a good handle on its
production of food waste, it's never a bad idea to dive a little deeper into
how much waste you produce on a daily basis. If your waste production turns out
to be more than you thought, try taking some simple steps to better monitor and
minimize your waste production. Your community, your planet, and your wallet
will thank you.
The American restaurant industry has a big food waste problem. A
2014 study by the Food Waste Reduction Alliance found that 84.3%
of unused food in American restaurants ends up being disposed of, while 14.3%
is recycled, and only 1.4% is donated.
Many restaurants and organizations have adopted the mission to end food waste, especially since so many people across the country suffer from a lack of access to high-quality food. One of those is Feedback, an environmental organization that has planned a number of campaigns to bring about global awareness of the issue
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