Tips: Trimming Practices
LeanPath coaches speak with clients on a regular basis. Often we learn new information that can help others reduce waste and we like to share those Hints and Tips with you. Many facilities believe that trim waste is a necessary part of business and little can be done to impact the amount. But through monitoring the amount of trim waste you have, and using that information as teaching tool with the employees or purchasing, our clients have found they can impact the amounts of trim waste they have on a daily basis.
Trimming Practices:
- When first looking at how employees trim items people often find there’s quite a difference between the way they think things should be done and how they are actually done. Review trimming procedures with the staff frequently so employees know the importance of proper trimming in order to maximize yields. Be sure to schedule trim training on a frequent basis and review trim buckets often. Are the employees coring out the tomatoes and strawberries or lopping off the top third? Are they taking care in beef trimming to make sure that the minimum amount of muscle is removed?
- Keep an eye on staff changes and if your chief trimmer is on vacation or leave make sure the fill-in knows proper procedures or you won’t be getting the required yields. In larger facilities weekly tracking numbers can highlight these increases and alert chef’s that there’s a possible issue.
- Do the employees have the proper tools and are they in good condition? Make sure that knifes and slicers are sharp. One client upon reviewing trim waste from deli meat increased the frequency of blade sharpening and found that this cut down deli meat trim waste to almost nothing.
- Tracking data on trim waste can also highlight product issues that can often be associated with changing seasons. if you see the pounds increasing this could mean that there’s a variance in product quality and as the season change, your ordering should as well.
- Is trimming the end of the line for that item? Often trimmed items have alternative uses in the operation and with a bit of creativity can be re-utilized. Making stock with trimmings is one common usage that our clients have found for trim waste. Also, one client ran a “trim waste idea” contest with their employees and from that contest came the idea of using certain fruit trimmings for cobblers that they could sell on their dessert station. Challenge the staff with this idea and you might be surprised at what they come up with!
