Food Waste Focus

When speak with many chefs in bulk production environments, they often mentionone of their top waste management challenges is predicting demand.  They don’t know how many people will eat today, and so it’s difficult to manage production levels. I agree this is a significant challenge and there is no single answer for how to resolve it.   [...]

Restaurant Associates announced this week a new set of Green Dining Best Practices that were developed in conjunction with the Environmental Defense Fund.  You can read the press release or jump through right to the recommendation summary or the details on waste minimization.   They have the right concept by focusing on source reduction as a key [...]

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) has been developing a sustainability self-rating tool for colleges and universities called the Sustainablity Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS).  It includes credits for dining services and waste management. AASHE just released a report on the STARS Pilot Test.   This report found that, of [...]

Hey everyone: These are two great articles from “Food Management” magazine, April 2009.  Andrew recently blogged about these, but here are the links to the full articles. Green Space: Scaling Back Overproduction: http://food-management.com/segments/healthcare/scaling-back-overproduction-0409/ Strategic Thinking: Always Evaluate the Cost of Doing Nothing:  http://food-management.com/business_topics/equipment/always-evaluate-cost-0409/

LeanPath is proud to announce the release of ValuWaste 4, the most comprehensive food waste tracking software solution available.  Our team spent almost two years developing this upgrade to our core ValuWaste platform and it reflects a broad range of customer tracking needs, including post-consumer waste.  If you are interested in waste tracking, I encourage [...]

I was in a large foodservice operation recently when a veteran foodservice worker called me aside.  She had been working in cold prep for years (making grab-and-go sandwiches, salades, etc.) and frequently heard about other workers throwing away her products prematurely.  She explained to me what happened at her facility and it was, unfortunately, a [...]

The link below will take you to a short interview with LeanPath CEO, Andrew Shakman about food waste. http://www.smartketing.com/03_buzz/02_buzz.htm It was part of the “Your Environmental Footprint” seminar at MenuDirections 2009 in San Antonio.   Part of the speech focussed on “Green Kitchens” and was given by Jim Matorin of Smartketing http://www.smartketing.com

San Francisco just passed one of the toughest municipal recycling ordinances in America.   Starting this Fall, all residences and businesses will be required to separate food waste for composting.   This is likely to be the direction that many municipalities will pursue in the months and years to come.   Read about the details in the SF [...]

Amazing the helpful information that you find on the internet… One of our favorite sites is the EPA website (United States Environmental Protection Agency).  http://www.epa.gov/.  To say there is a volume of information is an understatement – although it is sometimes hard to navigate. But the page that caught our attention today, focuses on managing [...]

Jim Matorin, a Foodservice Marketing Catalyst, recently blogged about the power of the “status quo” and how difficult it is for foodservice to pursue change.  It’s a good point and applies directly to food waste – the very first thing foodservice operators need to do is acknowledge that waste is a problem and deserves more [...]