Restaurant Food Waste Matters More Than You Think

Restaurant food waste is a term that encompasses all the food a business throws away — whether it’s in the kitchen, in the dining room, or straight from the walk-in fridge. As simple as it sounds, it’s an issue that brings about a range of financial, environmental, and social issues. That said, it's crucial for restaurants to be aware of how much food they’re tossing so they can actively work to find solutions to food waste problems.

Key Points:

• If you’re wondering, “what do restaurants do with leftover food”, you should know that it usually ends up in the trash. This is a huge problem in both dining rooms and kitchens across the country.
• Not only does food waste negatively impact your bottom line, but it’s also incredibly harmful to communities as well as the environment.
• Despite the gravity of the issue, there are plenty of solutions for how to prevent food waste you should consider implementing in your day-to-day operations.

What Is Restaurant Food Waste?

Essentially, restaurant food waste is any and all food and ingredients a restaurant throws away. Restaurant food waste can happen in different ways and occur at different phases of prepping, cooking, and serving a meal.

Types of Restaurant Food Waste

At the end of the day, all food waste ends up in the same place — the trash. However, there are two primary categories of restaurant food waste you need to be aware of. Some restaurants struggle with one type more than the other, so understanding the distinction is the first step you need to take to learn how to reduce food waste. Take a look:

• Pre-Consumer: This type of food waste happens in the back of the house — before the food ever leaves the kitchen. It includes food that’s thrown out due to mistakes in preparation as well as food that goes bad before it’s used.
• Post-Consumer: Most restaurant food waste falls into the category, which encompasses food that’s thrown out by guests at the restaurant. Essentially, any food that’s left on a customer’s plate and not taken home is considered food waste.

What Causes Restaurant Food Waste?

Despite how complex the ramifications of food waste can be, the root causes of restaurant food waste are actually quite simple. This is good news because once you pinpoint what’s causing the problem, there are plenty of helpful strategies you can employ as solutions. Below are the four main causes of restaurant food waste:

• Spoilage: Spoilage refers to food that goes bad in storage — before it ever has a chance to be used. This can be caused by doing inventory incorrectly, improper labeling, or storing food in a disorganized manner that makes it difficult to see when ingredients are going bad.
• Portion Miscalculation: While you don’t want your customers to leave feeling hungry (or feeling like they’ve been ripped off), restaurants often serve portions that are too large, which results in food waste. 
• Food Spillage: This refers to food that’s lost as a result of someone dropping a tray, knocking over a plate, tipping over a quart container, etc. Accidents happen, but when they happen too often they can lead to unnecessary food waste.
• Refires: When a guest sends an item back and it needs to be re-made (whether it’s due to a kitchen or server error), it’s called a refire. Since you can’t do anything with food that’s already been sent out to a customer, the only option is to throw it away.

Why Is Restaurant Food Waste an Issue?

Numbers don’t lie, and the facts and figures regarding food waste are distressing. Statistics show that between 22-33 billion pounds of food are wasted in America each year, with the restaurant industry wasting about $162 billion dollars worth. These figures are even more staggering when they’re put into the context of the fact that 42 million Americans struggle with food insecurity.

How to Reduce Food Waste in Restaurants: 20 Tips

Thankfully, restaurants can reduce food waste by adhering to simple best practices, focusing on training their staff appropriately, and following the tips and tricks below:

Complete a Waste Audit

As with many things, the first step in solving this problem is to determine just how big of an issue you’re actually dealing with. Conducting a food waste audit means you need to sort, weigh, and record how much food you’re throwing away. Unfortunately, this entails physically going through the trash, but it’s an unpleasant activity that will result in pleasant (and profitable) improvements.

Calculate Inventory Days on Hand (DOH)

Inventory days on hand (DOH) is a measure of how quickly you go through your goods. Since having items sitting in stock for too long can lead to unnecessary food waste, the lower your DOH, the better. You can calculate this by using the following equation: average inventory/(cost of goods sold/days in your accounting period).

Adopt New Policies

Adopting and implementing new policies geared towards reducing restaurant food waste can provide your team with useful structure. Even taking small steps such as training servers to ask about dietary restrictions before taking orders can do wonders. Adopting new policies in both the front and back of the house is ideal, since food waste is a two-pronged problem.

Store Food Properly

Using appropriate containers, keeping food at the correct temperature, and labeling containers accurately are all small steps that can add up to big improvements. Training your staff on best practices regarding food storage is essential when it comes to reducing waste.

Promote Sustainable Preparation

Encouraging your kitchen staff to practice sustainable preparation can do wonders to reduce food waste in the kitchen. It all boils down to training your staff to take care to use every edible part of an ingredient. This can look like focusing on knife skills so that produce scraps aren’t wasted or finding ways to utilize less common cuts of meat.

Avoid Over Preparation

While it’s often easier to batch things in large quantities, doing so can lead to unsold food going bad. It usually takes a good deal of trial and error to find the sweet spot between over-preparing and under-preparing, so being diligent about tracking usage is key to finding the right balance.

Repurpose Ingredients

If you have an ingredient that needs to be used before it goes bad, consider finding a way to repurpose it. You can also repurpose pieces of ingredients that would otherwise be thrown away. For example, you can use bones to make stock.

Include Multi-Use Menu Items

The more use you can get out of an ingredient, the less likely you are to find yourself throwing it away. If you purchase an ingredient that’s only featured in one dish, and you end up selling less of that dish, you’ll have no choice but to toss it. This means including multi-use items on your menu is a smart approach.

Adjust Menus to the Season

Featuring fresh, seasonal items on your menu increases the likelihood that your dishes will sell. This means focusing on seasonality also reduces the likelihood that you’ll have to toss unused ingredients or that your guests won’t enjoy their food because the ingredients aren't at their peak.

Improve Inventory Control

The best way to improve your inventory control is to track exactly how much of each ingredient you use from week to week. Learning to predict how much inventory you need on hand is a lot easier when you can make your decisions based on concrete data.

Run Weekly Specials

If you notice you have ingredients that are at risk of spoiling, the best course of action is often running a special that includes them. Not only will doing so reduce waste, but it also keeps things interesting for your customers.

Implement the FIFO Method

FIFO stands for “first in, first out,” and it essentially is a method of preventing food from going bad by ensuring items that are going to spoil first are used first. Proper labeling and storage are crucial to this method’s success since your staff won’t be able to tell what needs to be used first if it’s not clearly marked.

Utilize Recipe Management

Recipe management entails calculating how much food a specific recipe yields. Understanding how much food you’re making (and how much it costs) means you’ll be able to get a better grasp on appropriate menu prices and portions.

Track Popularity of Menu Items

Unpopular items translate to increased food waste, so it’s crucial to understand which items are selling the most consistently. Tracking menu item popularity will clue you into when you need to eliminate items.

Document Waste Control Efforts

Keeping an eye on how much food you’re wasting is important, but so is documenting the details. Just making a mental note isn’t enough to really make strides in terms of reducing food waste, so logging as much data as you can is key.

Incorporate a Food Waste Tracker

Methodizing how you document food waste will allow you to discover patterns. A food waste tracker can be something as simple as a spreadsheet that includes information like which ingredient was wasted, how much, and by whom.

Provide Takeout Containers

Even if you keep an eye on portions, there are always going to be people who don’t finish the food on their plates. Providing takeout containers means that food can become tasty leftovers rather than wasteful trash.

Offer Meals to Employees

This is a win-win strategy since offering “family meal” is a great way to incorporate ingredients that need to be used, and doing so also keeps employees happy. Plus, it helps build a sense of community that usually translates into positive energy your guests can sense and feel. 

Donate Leftover Food to Charity

No matter how careful you are, there are always going to be times when you find yourself with leftover food. Donating it to charity helps others as well as strengthens your business’s relationship with the community.

Compost Food Waste

Composting food waste is an eco-friendly solution that minimizes how much waste your business sends to the landfill. Composting has a range of environmental benefits, and you can even use your compost as a nutrient-rich fertilizer to grow your own herbs, fruits, and vegetables.

Benefits of Restaurant Food Waste Management

There are an incredible amount of benefits that stem from proper restaurant food waste management. You won’t have to wait long to see your hard work pay off, either. Financially speaking, you’ll notice your profits improving as soon as you start finding ways to reduce food waste. Take a look at just a few of the benefits you can reap from implementing the strategies above:

• Increased profits: Throwing away food is essentially throwing away money, so finding ways to reduce waste keeps more money in your pocket. In fact, studies show that reducing food waste can also reduce your operating costs by up to 30%.
• More sustainable: Food waste usually ends up in landfills, which contributes to a host of environmental issues. Reducing how much waste your business produces is a great way to protect the planet.
• Community benefits: In a world where so many people go hungry, preventing food waste is the right thing to do. Whether you donate food to charity or just reduce how much good food you throw away, the benefits of doing your part to tackle food insecurity can’t be understated.

How to Start a Restaurant Waste Management Program 

When you’re ready to stop unnecessary waste, food management programs are worth getting started. Begin by gathering data, deciding what policies you want to prioritize, and then consider funding sources like restaurant business loans in order to make your program possible. Although making these changes requires an initial investment of time and resources, you won’t have to wait long to see a return.