Hints and Tips: Breakfast Meat
Breakfast: Cutting the Pork
When starting a tracking/prevention program, it’s easy to overlook wasted breakfast meats. Why? Many cafe operations are focused on high volume lunch service, so the few stations that are open in the morning get setup early, loaded with par levels, so staff can focus on the upcoming lunch service. However, if operators review food waste tracking data for the morning, they often see a recurring pattern: lots of discarded, relatively-expensive breakfast meats. this is a great opportunity for waste prevention.
- Review par levels: Use tracking data to determine the pattern of how much bacon, sausage or other breakfast meats are regularly left over. Back off initial production levels to still allow for prompt guest service, without leaving all the leftovers. Instead of multiple full sheet pans of bacon, make the secondary production on half sheet pans or cook to order as breakfast service starts to wind down.
- Consider Re-use Opportunities: Pay close attention to food safety rules, safe handling practices and quality and then find alternative uses for the leftover breakfast meats. Bacon–crumble the bacon for the salad bar to reduce purchasing on often expensive bacon toppings. Or utilize the leftover bacon topping for other dishes, as a value add for baked/mashed potatoes or in other recipes from soups to casseroles. Sausage–utilize leftovers as a topping for pizza or save for sausage gravy. Great ways to add flavor, value and reduce waste!
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