Food Waste Focus

The American Hospital Association just unveiled a new web site designed to educate hospital CEO’s and trustees about sustainability in healthcare.   Titled the “Executive Primer on Hospital Environmental Sustainability” the site includes overviews of several topic areas, including Food.
The food section of the web site discusses waste as one of the key trends [...]

Salad Bar: A thorny issue
When starting a tracking/prevention program, it’s often the salad bar items them can be targeted early for an easy win. Why? Many cafe operations deem the salad bar easy to do, you set it up, keep it full and then throw it away.  It’s often not till we start tracking these items [...]

Jill Scott is the Assistant Director of Food Services at Ohio Health’s Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio where she has served for four years. She previously was with Ohio State University in the Hospitality Management Program and in Campus Dining Services.
Initial Expectations
The team at Riverside has been using the LeanPath system since June 2009. [...]

When tracking food waste, it’s invaluable to compare recent weeks against each other. Using a tool we call a Comparison Report you can highlight week to week changes and identify specific areas that are getting better as well as those that have gotten worse.
With ValuWaste Advantage 4, operators now have the ability to create Comparison [...]

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 [...]

Compostable foodservice disposables (such as bagasse plates, PLA cups, potato cutlery, etc.) have received a lot of operator attention in recent years. However, one of the foodservice sectors that has been slower to embrace these products is healthcare foodservice.
Why is the case?
Perhaps one reason is that at least 30% of the meal volume in [...]

We’re proud to announce that LeanPath will be previewing our new food waste tracking software product at the National Restaurant Show starting this weekend (May 22-25).
The software is called WasteLOGGER and it’s designed for operations with lower volumes of production and food waste than those that use our fully automated system called ValuWaste.   WasteLOGGER will [...]

Practice Greenhealth recently released a 10-Step Guide to Foodservice Composting.  Although it was written specifically with healthcare foodservice in mind, all the content should be generally applicable to most volume foodservice operations.
Download Practice Greenhealth Guide here: Composting 10StepGuide
Practice Greenhealth offers many other excellent resources on waste management. Visit their site at www.practicegreenhealth.org.

Day of the Week Waste Reports – Match Waste and Menus
Many operators have menus that stay mostly the same day-to-day while others run cycle menus and specials that create regular change.  Regardless of which type of menu you have, it’s very useful to review waste by day of the week.  This [...]

Timing is Everything: Watch the Calendar
We’ve found that chefs who are successful at maximizing sales and reducing waste are, in most cases, very good at predicting customer demand. The more accurately we can forecast demand, the less likely we are to have leftover items that become waste. The only thing you can count about customer [...]