Wastage can have a direct impact on the restaurant’s profit margins. And no matter how small or big your restaurant is, the chances are you are leaving thousands of dollars on the table due to food waste.
A report by RTS suggests that the restaurant industry spends an estimated $162 billion every year in costs related to wasted food. A major reason is that restaurants throw out nearly 94% of their excess food.
And I’m sure you don’t want to be doing that. So, without further ado, let’s look at the 18 best tips to reduce food waste in restaurants.
1- Conduct a Waste Audit
Unless you know how much food is being thrown out regularly, you cannot create a robust waste reduction plan. A waste audit also helps determine your potential cost savings.
When doing a waste audit, you will encounter two types of food waste:
- Pre-consumer waste: This includes the food that is wasted before even reaching the customer. For instance, if you have bought too many raw materials, they will most likely ripen even before you get the chance to cook them.
- Post-consumer waste: This includes the food that guests leave on their plates.
Determine how much of your waste falls into these categories to create a customized plan to minimize food wastage. You could take your daily, weekly, and monthly wastage into account to get a better picture.
Additionally, you can create a food waste management system (on your restaurant ordering software or a sheet of paper) where every employee keeps a note of:
- What is being thrown away?
- The weight or amount of waste
- Date and time
- How/why it was wasted (e.g., food burnt during preparation)
- The name of the staff who reported it
This will help pinpoint where the waste is coming from and whether your waste reduction plan is effective.
2- Train Your Staff to Reduce Food Wastage
Educate your employees (both consumer-facing and kitchen staff) about how they can help reduce food waste in your restaurant. Give them a basic idea of how to reuse and recycle food items.
For instance, you can teach your in-kitchen staff how to store food properly. You can also educate them on the importance of using the soon-to-expire food first.
Also, ask your waiters to suggest to customers how many plates would be ideal for them as per the number of people at the table. This will help reduce post-customer wastage.
3- Accurately Predict Your Needs
If you are throwing too much meat every three days, it’s pretty obvious that you are overbuying it. This is why accurately predicting your inventory requirements is a vital part of reducing food waste in restaurants.
Your restaurant management system can help you accurately forecast your requirements, enabling you to order only what you require.
Another way of doing that is by creating your grocery list with the menu alongside it. This will help determine what you need to buy, for what dishes, and in what ratios.
If you are buying more products at once because your distributor offers a discount on bulk purchases, you will likely be losing more dollars in the long run due to wastage. Therefore, talk to them and cut a deal to ensure you get the best price while buying only what you need.
4- Evaluate Your Inventory Before Every Purchase
It is vital to assess the already existing stock before you head to purchase your next batch. Since maximum food wastage happens when the food is not consumed within the expiration date, you should first use the items already available with you before ordering again.
You can consider setting a reminder to order ingredients and raw materials when they hit a predefined level. This will help ensure you don’t over-purchase items while eliminating the fear of running out of stock.
A good restaurant ordering system allows you to manage your inventory and keep track of stock details, making it easier for you to minimize food wastage.
5- Store Foods Appropriately
Perishable items, such as fruits and vegetables, each have different ways to store to avoid spoilage.
Here are some tips for storing foods in a way that increases their shelf life.
- Store vegetables like carrots, broccoli, cabbage, etc., in a plastic bag or a cloth bag in the crisper of your refrigerator.
- According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, fruits like apples, bananas, and tomatoes release natural gasses as they ripen. Therefore, it is recommended to store vegetables in a different part of the fridge than fruits.
- Keep the refrigerator temperature below 5℃.
- Transfer leftovers from an open can into a suitable container to prevent them from spoiling quickly.
6- Get Creative With Menu
Optimize your menu in a way that you can use a food item in multiple dishes. This will enable you to purchase those items in bulk (thereby saving you money) while still minimizing wastage.
For instance, if you have surplus fruits or vegetables, see if you can create something using them. You can then add a board in your restaurant and add those items as “today’s specials.”
However, make sure that they taste like specials and are worth customers’ money.
Tip: Websites like MyFridgeFood and Supercook provide recipes based on whatever ingredients you have on hand.
7- Run Weekly Discounts and Offers
Promotions and discounts are a great way to get more orders. This means you can quickly use unused food and ingredients before they spoil and end up in your waste bin.
You don’t need to run promotions every week. Instead, run them when your business is slower than expected, and you end up with too much food.
For example, say you bought lots of chicken for New Year’s Eve but didn’t receive as many orders. You can create a “limited-time chicken special offer” to drive more customers to your restaurants and use your stock.
8- Implement the FIFO Rule
The FIFO (First-in, First-out) method is one of the most popular ways of reducing food waste. In the FIFO rule, your kitchen will be organized in a way that the soon-to-expire items will be used first, thereby cutting down on food waste.
For example, say you received hamburger buns on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. According to the FIFO rule, the buns received on Monday and Tuesday should be used before those received on Thursday.
However, as mentioned above, you need to arrange your kitchen accordingly to ensure no staff forgets the FIFO rule. You can also consider creating a shelf marked with the “Use this first” label and ask your staff to arrange items accordingly.
9- Freeze Extra Food
One of the most commonly used techniques to preserve food is freezing them. You can easily extend the shelf life of fresh fruits and vegetables by freezing them as soon as you bring them from the market. However, make sure to wash them before freezing.
You can also preserve other items, such as bread, meats, and cooked dishes, in the freezer. This will allow you to use all the items in your restaurant, thereby minimizing wastage.
10- Invest in Good Quality Kitchen Equipment
Investing in good-quality equipment can significantly lower your food wastage. For instance, a high-quality non-stick utensil can minimize the chances of food getting burned and, as a result going to the bin. Similarly, specialized knives for filleting fish will result in less waste.
You should also ensure that your coolers and freezers are working properly. They need to run at the right temperatures at all times, so the food remains safe to eat.
11- Reduce Portion Sizes
Did you know most restaurants pack their plates with portions that are often two-three times the recommended serving size?
This is one of the major contributors to post-consumer food waste. As a restaurateur aiming to minimize wastage, consider reducing your average serving size or using smaller plates.
However, you will also need to decrease the prices of your dishes to complement the reduced serving size.
12- Encourage Customers to Take the Leftovers Home
Diners, on average, leave 17% of their meals uneaten. Besides, 55% of leftovers are left behind at the restaurant instead of taken home.
That’s probably because most people are shy to ask waiters to pack the leftovers. But you can make it easier for them by asking them directly if they want the leftovers to be packed.
This way, they will get to eat the food they’ve already paid for and minimize the wastage at your restaurant.
13- Avoid Over Preparing
If your restaurant’s food waste tracker is telling you that you are throwing away a lot of pasta every three days, it’s obvious that you are over-preparing it.
While some restaurant owners prefer having more of an item than not enough, resulting in more wastage. However, by creating better forecasts, you can predict days and times when you are more likely to get orders for pasta and prepare for it accordingly.
This way, you won’t have to throw food every night, and you can save money on food and labor costs.
14- Consider Donating Uneaten Leftovers
While you’re doing your best to not over-prepare foods, some things are not in our hands (e.g., fewer orders). And when that happens, instead of throwing the food, you can consider donating it.
If you have an extra meal for only a few people, you can share the food with your employees. After all, they are working during usual meal times for you. This will help reduce food waste while simultaneously showing your appreciation towards them.
15– Try Composting
While preparing meals, you will often find scraps from the stems, peels, and unusable bits of food. Instead of throwing them, compost them in your backyard. It helps add nutrients to the soil, allowing you to grow more naturally.
The good thing is, you can compost more than food. Paper products like napkins, cups, and plates also decompose well.
If you don’t have enough space for composting, you can donate the food to local farmers.
16- Give Scraps to Local Farmers for Feed
Leftover foods from diners’ plates cannot be eaten (or composted). However, instead of throwing them away, you can donate them to local farmers for feeding their pigs.
Both raw and cooked food is great for pigs. However, make sure not to donate any item that consists of meat or fish products.
17- Give Importance to Food Seasonality
While almost every fruit and vegetable is available year-round, some items taste the best during the peak season. As a result, the demand for dishes that use those vegetables also surges in those seasons.
Cauliflowers, for instance, have a peak season in the US from September to November. This means you are more likely to receive orders for dishes that use cauliflowers between September and November compared to other months.
However, it is best identified using your restaurant ordering system that has details of every order. Therefore, we recommend using the data to identify dishes that see a low sales volume during the off-season, so you can reduce the raw material purchase, thereby minimizing wastage.
18- Develop a Culture of Food Waste Reduction for Planet
None of the food waste reduction strategies mentioned above will mean anything if your employees are not aligned with your goals. Your team needs to do everything in their hand to minimize food waste and your goals to stick around.
A great way to ensure that your staff always aims to reduce food waste is by connecting their efforts directly to the environment. Educate them on how much food waste affects the planet and how their efforts to reduce the waste can benefit the world.This will make them feel proud of their work and build an emotional connection with your goals.
Wrapping Up
The benefits of reducing food waste in your restaurant are widespread; you can have a positive impact on the environment, boost your employee morale, and improve profit margins. By implementing the 18 strategies mentioned in this article, you can see a significant reduction in food wastage.
