Food waste directly impacts your restaurant’s finances—on average, a restaurant loses 4% to 10%1 of the food they purchase. Food waste mitigation not only helps your bottom line by lowering food and operating costs, but it also makes your business more sustainable. With millions of people in the US struggling with food insecurity, minimizing food waste should be a priority for your restaurant.
Reducing food waste in restaurants is something any chef must know about when operating their kitchen—and a lesson I learned early on in my food career. Accurate ordering and inventory procedures, proper menu planning and ingredient storage, and waste tracking and disposal all lead to lower food waste. Below, I share more tips you can implement in your food business.
Key takeaways:
- Managing food waste will reduce your food cost, one of the major expenses of running a restaurant.
- Organization in ordering, preparing, executing, and storing ingredients always leads to less food waste.
- Empower your staff to discuss gaps in your food preparation that lead to waste.
How Restaurant Food Goes to Waste
Restaurant food waste differs from household food waste in scale. Two primary drivers of food waste in restaurants are overordering and overprepping. A misconception among diners is that unwanted food can be a food waste driver, but it is unused food that is the bigger issue—with an estimated 85% of unused food being thrown away instead of being donated or composted. Food that is also prepared incorrectly, contaminated, or made simply out of error also goes to waste.
1. Practice Concise & Accurate Ordering
Anyone combating food waste in their restaurant needs to understand how they are ordering food and how to arrive at the correct order quantity. You will have vendors that offer different delivery days and cadences—for example, Sysco may come every Tuesday, while your produce vendor may come twice a week. Knowing how to manage your delivery windows for each vendor is crucial. You can use historical sales data, historical ordering data, and inventory management from your point-of-sale (POS) system to make better ordering decisions.
That being said, it’s important to have a system that allows you to order exactly what you need for a time period. The restaurant industry can be highly volatile, and your needs can change on any given week. But by using historical data, accounting for any changes in customer numbers during your current week, and leveraging inventory counts, you will be able to order what you need without throwing away a ton of food at the end of the week.
2. Use Inventory Par-level Knowledge
In the restaurant industry, par levels refer to the minimum inventory you should keep to meet customer demand while keeping safety stock in case of unexpected demand.
Par levels should be updated after monthly inventory counts, as business trends can change month-to-month. A quarter can work, too, but if you want true accuracy, then updating necessary par levels month-to-month is key.
So, for example, your sheet says you need three cases of iceberg lettuce for the week ahead. And for a month, you only use one and a half. If you do not know existing par levels or you always build to three cases, then that is a case and a half of lettuce each week you are tossing into the trash. Small examples like that will eventually add up and kill your food cost.
3. Conduct Routine Inventory Counts
What goes with accurate ordering? Diligent and accurate inventory counting. Knowing your inventory is the only way you can confidently order food in a way that avoids waste. Having a weekly inventory count allows you to do this. Knowing what you have on hand versus what you should have ensures you order the necessary amount of food you need for the next week.
In 2024, there are so many different inventory management software to choose from. I highly encourage investing in software to help you learn your exact par-level needs and break down your inventory and ordering into actionable data that lets you control the amount of food you are bringing in.
It is often the case that finding the time to count inventory is the hard part. I would look for quieter times, such as in the morning or on slower business days, to get accurate counts. You need whoever is doing your inventory counting to be focused on their task so that you get accurate data.
4. Ensure Diligent Ingredient Receiving
Next on the list of ways to reduce food waste in your restaurant is diligently receiving products. If you check every delivery before signing the invoice, you can avoid accepting food that is damaged or close to expiring. For canned goods, this will mean checking for dents, broken seals, or any other damage that makes the food inside unusable. The same goes for items such as tubs of mayo or bags of soy sauce.
For fresh produce, create spec sheets or cheat sheets showing how you expect your produce to look. Rejecting low-quality or less-than-stellar produce will avoid a ton of waste and cost on your end. It will also let your vendors know you expect the highest quality ingredients.
The same goes for proteins like meat and fish. On red meats, checking for oxidation and off-odors is important. For fish, looking at the eyes, checking their gills, and noting harvest tags is important. For shellfish such as crab, checking the Julian date[fsb-info-icon layout=”information” title=”” content=”A code representing the date food was packaged or manufactured”] is key to understanding freshness. All of these checks in your receiving method will filter out pre-determined waste and help your business financially in the long run.
5. Train Staff on Ingredient Standards
Along with refining your receiving process, train your staff on what to look out for with the ingredients that come in through the back door. While it is often a manager or leader accepting orders and ensuring that the food you are receiving is in its best shape, all kitchen staff should know ingredient standards when producing your menu items. If they do not recognize a certain ingredient has gone bad or is not usable, then using it in a larger recipe can lead to large amounts of avoidable food waste.
Staff that are encouraged to monitor ingredient quality will save you time and money. Countless times, I have worked in kitchens where staff often hold the standard set by their chef, and this always leads to safe, high-quality food for customers. The other side of that coin is that it allows you, as a leader, to reach out to suppliers to address quality issues. It also helps catch any gaps in ingredient quality that would lead to more waste in your business.
6. Consider a Seasonally Changing Menu
One of the better ways to reduce food waste from a menu-building standpoint is to change your menu to better suit the seasons in which certain ingredients grow. For example, if you have fresh tomato dishes in the winter when cooking on the East Coast, then the quality of your tomatoes will be less than ideal, leading to lower shelf life and more food waste. Also, such dishes may not be as popular during a colder month, so having this menu item prepped and those ingredients on hand can be costly.
By working seasonally, you work when produce is at its peak. Naturally, this means that it will have a better shelf life and more time, so it can be used effectively in your restaurant. It also means that customers will order these dishes when the flavor is prime, so it will make sense as to why the dish is being served at that time of the year. A seasonally adjusted menu helps you use available produce, reducing the waste of sub-par ingredients that struggle to stay fresh longer and ingredients that do not have as much flavor overall.
7. Implement a Waste-tracking System
One of the better ways to see how much food is going to be wasted in your restaurant is to instill a system that tracks all waste that occurs. This system should consider any leftover recipes thrown away at the end of the night, recipes made incorrectly and tossed, ingredients thrown away, and any other food item discarded. This can be tedious at first, but by tracking your waste, you can do things such as update prep lists, see which ingredients are expiring quicker, and tailor your menu and offerings to absorb better any waste that must occur as a result of doing business.
When I worked in restaurants on the garde manger station, for example, any extra containers of dressing, corn, or other garnish that were tossed at the end of a shift would be tracked in a station waste log. This would let my chef know how much of a product we used and what we should aim to prep for the next service. As mentioned before, overprep is a big driver of food waste, so ensuring the waste log is adhered to allows you to see gaps in the work you are doing.
8. Have Standardized Recipes
One of the biggest flaws I see in restaurants is a lack of standardized recipes. While some restaurants may just cook by feel and verbal direction, not having standard recipes for your staff to follow is a major setback when it comes to managing waste. Standardized recipes drive consistency and ensure your staff only prepares what is called for. This also allows employees to make recipes accurately and prevents having to start from scratch due to improper methods or ingredient additions.
The other beautiful thing about having standardized recipes is that you can map out what needs to be made daily and build your ingredient orders off that. So, not only do you avoid overprepping, but you also avoid overordering as long as your employees follow the standard recipes you have set forth for them. Creating standard recipes does not need to be hard. A folder or laminated binder with paper printouts, iPads that access a shared drive, or handwritten instructions will all suffice.
9. Use the FIFO Method
“FIFO,” or first in, first out, is a phrase that everyone who has worked in a kitchen has heard. It is a method of storage that ensures the food expiring the soonest is used first. While the principle is known by all, it does take diligence to ensure your storage areas are following this practice. Not training your staff on FIFO and not adhering to this method will cause the product to spoil, adding unnecessary waste that hurts your bottom line. While this may be an obvious step, it can be easy to overlook, especially in busy kitchens. Ensure your staff follows FIFO to avoid food waste and use products at their peak state.
10. Have an Organized Walk-in & Dry Storage
As a younger manager, I learned very quickly how important it was to have an organized walk-in. I think back to busy shifts where I was missing a sauce or prepped item, struggling to make it on the fly, only to find it behind the jar of horseradish on the back of a walk-in shelf. Without organization, your storage areas begin to fail. When items are hard to find and cannot be accessed in a hurry, they get missed and ultimately get thrown out.
Proper labeling and knowing what is exactly in containers are essential to organization. This means containers of prep are labeled cleanly, organized on your shelf in a meaningful manner, and the label is facing out for ease of access. Organization also means ensuring that items are dated when they were made (to practice FIFO) and that like ingredients are stored together to avoid cross-contamination and unusable products.
11. Know How to Store Individual Ingredients
This will apply more so to the more perishable ingredients, but ensuring you know how ingredients should be stored is critical to ensuring shelf-life. Take herbs, for example. They die easily if not stored properly; they need to breathe and avoid moisture to stay fresh. Ground meat needs to be kept in an airtight container to avoid oxidization. Knowing how food should be stored based on the need of each individual ingredient helps you keep them longer and avoid any potential waste.
12. Ensure Your Serving Sizes Make Sense
One way you could be causing food waste is by over-portioning what you give to customers. While you never want to be seen as cheap when it comes to what you sell to paying guests, there can be a point where you may be giving too much food that your customers cannot finish. Your dishes and dining experience should leave your guests full, and while everyone can consume different amounts of food, there should not be plates piled high with food going into the trash when they make their way to the dishwasher.
To ensure your plates are portioned properly, be sure to train your staff and have tools on hand to make consistency possible during service. This can be serving spoons, measuring cups, and other functional tools that allow your staff to portion their plates consistently. Guide your staff on portion amounts for items that can be counted. Heaping plates of food cost you money when you can satisfy your guests with a portion that is fulfilling but not wasteful.
13. Have Functional Delivery Days
It is important to have multiple delivery days of fresh products to your restaurant when possible. This keeps your food fresh, allows you to use what you need, and lets you adjust orders based on how busy the week has been. I have often worked in restaurants where two to three days of delivery from produce, seafood, and certain meat purveyors was the norm. This was to ensure we got the best possible product. It also lets us pivot to bring in more or fewer items. This flexibility is a crucial way to track your food cost and make sure a lot of product you bring into your kitchen does not go to waste.
14. Build Menu Items to Use Cross-functional Recipes
This is another great way to bring fluidity to how your team prepares food while also ensuring your food waste stays low. Having menu items that utilize ingredients or sub-recipes across more than one dish allows you to utilize these base foods while controlling waste. Concepts such as Chipotle thrive with menus like this. Having a few controlled bases to build your restaurant on is an excellent way to manage waste and stay on top of prep.
Of course, your restaurant may not be a quick-service burrito bowl restaurant. But you can do some dishes, such as risotto, with different inclusions. Maybe one risotto includes roasted vegetables, while another contains butter-poached lobster. Your risotto base can stay the same, while all the other flavoring agents in the dish can change to fit that specific menu item. Another great idea is using a salad mix for a variety of salads on your menu. Having base items that can spread throughout your menu means fewer variables and more control over waste.
15. Offer Specials When They Make Sense
One crutch in the restaurant industry that can often be perceived as bad is the restaurant special. This can often be seen as the items you need to get rid of, so therefore, it is important to ensure your specials seem well thought out and make sense for the customer.
If you have rare, high-cost ingredients to get rid of, then specials can be a great way to highlight them. Or even better, seasonal ingredients you brought in-house can be great ingredient types to use in a special. It can be a dish that is not common on your menu but one that can be used to flex your creativity and use up hard-to-get ingredients while also using items that may go to waste.
16. Donate
While this may not help your overall food cost, donating your restaurant leftovers is a great way to ensure this food does not simply end up in a landfill. There are many organizations in bigger metro areas you can work with—one example is Copia—and it is important to understand the liabilities involved with donating food so that you can be fully aware of what the process entails.
Having an impact on your community is always a win, so donate when you can. Food does not need to be wasted, and if it can be given to those in need—that is something you and your business can be proud of.
17. Use Leftover Food for Staff Meals
Another great way to utilize food that may go to waste is to use these extra ingredients for staff meals. Of course, be sure that the food you are using is still good. But if you have leftover ingredients that you expect to go bad, then making a staff meal with them is an investment into your team worth making.
Staff meals build morale, bring your employees together, and offer a small break between prep and service that can reset and refresh your team. Do not think of staff meals as a burden, but rather a way to be there for your employees. By using excess ingredients, you are investing those food cost dollars into your team and avoiding food that would otherwise go to waste.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Food waste is something many restauranteurs are challenged with on a weekly basis. Below are some of the common questions asked on how to reduce food waste in restaurants.
Bottom Line
Reducing food waste in a restaurant is an ongoing challenge that can be challenging to figure out at first. But with the right processes in place and constant management of your employees, reducing food waste can be not only achievable but also sustainable.
When it comes to reducing food waste in restaurants, the biggest impact you can have is overseeing ordering, organization, and execution of your food. Operators who can achieve effective management of their kitchen and employees will have lower food costs, less waste, and, ultimately, a better end product for their guests.
- https://restaurant.org/education-and-resources/resource-library/control-your-food-waste-to-reduce-rising-costs/ ↩︎
