Starches a sticky issue

When starting a tracking/prevention program, it’s often the starches that are one of the highest waste items. Why? Starches (pasta, rice, potatoes, etc.) are an accompaniment to most dishes, thus are often produced in bulk while more “expensive” center of the plate items are more closely monitored.  It’s often not till we start tracking these items that operators realize how much starch waste happens daily, making it a good target for reduction.

• Monitor Production:  How much do you really use?  Often we start will full pans of starches and continue to produce full pans until the end of service.  Instead of continually keeping  pans at the ready throughout the service, prepare for the initial rush and then batch produce in smaller vessels as service winds down.  Don’t get pan tunnel vision when preparing these items, back-up can just as easily be in a half pan or smaller.
• Have a plan: Pay close attention to the sides, menus and where they can be used.  Look for opporunities to use a starch across multiple offerings.  If potatoes or rice can be spread across the menu and is not just destined for one dish, there is less likely to be large amounts of leftover.  As one station winds down have a plan in mind for moving leftover starches to other stations to use up any excess. 
• Target re-use opportunities: What can be done with the leftovers?  If the items were never put out, they can be re-dressed into future items.  Rice can be used in puddings, soups or ethnic dishes.  Noodles that were not sauces can be saved for use in salads on the salad bar, into a frittata dish or soups. Potatoes can be re-issued into soups, used as homefries, made into mash potato pancakes and one client even pureed leftover french fries for usage as a thickener.

TIPS to ZAP Waste:  A regular Food Waste Focus feature on waste reduction best practices. Return to the Food Waste Focus blog for more TIPS by searching the “Tips” tag.  Also subscribe to the Food Waste Flyer Newsletter. Both contain fresh, real-world insights on food waste management from LeanPath, the experts in food waste tracking systems.

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 that operators realize how much waste comes off the salad bar daily, making it a good target for reduction. If operators review food waste tracking data for the salad bar, they often see a recurring pattern: lots of discarded lettuce as well as the “sneaky waste” in sides that can add up quickly. With a few changes, you can keep the salad bar looking bountiful and this is a great opportunity for waste prevention.

• Review restock policy:  How do you re-stock the salad bar throughout service?  Often we start will full pans of lettuce and keep them topped off until the end.  Instead of continually keeping full six inch deep pans of lettuce throughout the service, start off big and then rotate to smaller pans as service winds down.  You can then keep the salad bar looking full, but by the end you’re down to a four inch or smaller pans of lettuce, less waste.
• Take a look at the sides: Pay close attention to the sides and what is thrown away. Key in on the less popular items and remove them from the salad bar or move them to smaller vessels.  As with lettuce, the most popular items can be re-stocked into smaller containers as service winds down. 
• Look at the space: Salad bars can take up a lot of real estate, does your volumes necessitate such space?  Based on your sales, you maybe able to shrink down the salad bar and use decorative covers to make areas to display items such as breads, desserts or other impulse items.  You could be creating daily waste by putting out less popular or unnecessary items to just fill the void. 
• Target service periods: If you run a dinner or late shift service some customers have had success by offering a selection of pre-made salads instead of a full salad bar.  Cuts down on waste and depending on timing and food safety any un-used salads maybe able to be rotated into the next days grab-n-go selections for lunch.  Just make sure your grab-n-go team takes inventory prior to building that days lunch selections!

TIPS to ZAP Waste:  A regular Food Waste Focus feature on waste reduction best practices. Return to the Food Waste Focus blog for more TIPS by searching the “Tips” tag.  Also subscribe to the Food Waste Flyer Newsletter. Both contain fresh, real-world insights on food waste management from LeanPath, the experts in food waste tracking systems.

With ValuWaste Advantage 4, operators now have the ability to create Comparison Reports that contrast the most recently completed weeks food waste against a previous week, a previous menu cycle or a custom time period. These exciting recent additions show specifically which food categories, loss reasons and even stations were “higher” in the previous cycle. This gives you information to work with your team to improve those results the next time.

Enlarge Report | Learn More About ValuWaste Advantage

Veteran LeanPath clients use Comparison Reports to catch “spikes” in the data. They then use this information to immediately focus attention on the “spike” and work with the team to create an action plan to avoid it happening again.

Comparison reports are also used by LeanPath clients to monitor progress on waste reduction goals. Working on a goal to reduce “casserole” waste by 50%? Use a Comparison Report each week to check your progress on this goal vs. the previous week. Things moving in the right direction? Celebrate success with the team, document the Best Practices and keep working on it. Little or no change? Use the data to share with the team and test new actions until you see improvement.

This link will take you to the presentation for “ABC’s of Food Waste Management: Reduction and Diversion“:  http://www.leanpath.com/docs/LeanPath_NRA_ABCs_Food_Waste.pdf

This is the last of the three presentations.

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!

TIPS to ZAP Waste:  A regular Food Waste Focus feature on waste reduction best practices. Return to the Food Waste Focus blog for more TIPS by searching the “Tips” tag.  Also subscribe to the Food Waste Flyer Newsletter. Both contain fresh, real-world insights on food waste management from LeanPath, the experts in food waste tracking systems.

This link will take you to the presentation for “Food Waste Tracking: What you need to know“:  http://www.leanpath.com/docs/LeanPath_NRA_Food_Waste_Tracking.pdf

Next week will post the last of the three presentations.

This link will take you to the presentation for “Emerging Trends in Food Waste Management“:  http://www.leanpath.com/docs/LeanPath_NRA_EmergingTrends.pdf

Over the next few weeks we will post the other two presentations.

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 allow people to track waste using specially designed forms and then easily enter it into WasteLOGGER in order to get all the benefits of dynamic reporting and analysis from software.    More info: LeanPath Media Advisory – 2010 NRA Show.

We’re really excited about this because now we will have the ability to help operations of all sizes prevent, avoid and reduce food waste!

The product will be previewed at the NRA show and available in July.  If you’re interested in learning more, please let us know by visiting the Contact Us link on the LeanPath web site.

Background

Micah has been with Bon Appetit for the past 15 years and at Intel for the past six. He has a long history in corporate foodservice and has been in the culinary industry for 20 plus years. His first job with Bon Appetit was at a small college in Scotts Valley, California. He then moved on Stanford University, where he became interested in the impact of food scraps on the environment. He started a composting system there as well as at his next two accounts, Pacific University in Stockton, California and at Intel in Oregon.

Experience with Waste Tracking

Chef Micah has been using LeanPath’s ValuWaste system for about a year. He reports that the system has raised awareness in the kitchen of how much product was being wasted. It has allowed his team to focus on problem areas and implement traceable results. In fact, he believes the best part of the program is the traceability back to underlying waste causes.

Initial Expectations

As with many chef customers, he was not sure what to expect from ValuWaste at the onset, but “has been very pleased with the information that I was able to get from the program”.

His biggest surprise about automated food waste tracking? “I was surprised at the steady lowering of waste as it was projected over the duration of the program. It is still going down, which makes me wonder where the bottom will be… zero waste?”

Recommendations

His advice to managers starting or already using the program is to “Be diligent at the scale. Make sure your staff understands the importance of weighing everything that goes in the trash/compost.  Use positive reinforcement to get the staff involved.”

Takeaways

Chef Micah believes that they “made great strides in reduction of batch cooked foods and beverages that would have gone unnoticed into the compost. But thanks to the ValuWaste program it made us examine and come up with a solution that in the end saved us money and time.”

“Schmoosh Pie” -  take day old pies that look tired and use a potato masher to break them up (“smoosh”).  Place contents in a cup and top with whipped cream.  Sell in the grab and go case.

Alternate:  use leftover cake and ‘smoosh’ for use a topping in pudding cups or layering in parfaits.

Similar – use leftover bread for sweet or savory bread pudding.  Make into individual cups for easier pricing.  Or, make a larger amount of bread pudding, keep warm, serve with with caramel syrup and sell portions priced by the ounce.

Use leftover oatmeal or cream of wheat as an additive to baking – i.e. muffins, quick breads.

Remember to follow the “meat handling hierarchy” for reuse:  roast, slide, dice and grind.  Each stage represents a new utilization opportunity.

Plan for a third soup each day from leftovers (a utilization item).  Garden Vegetable and Minestrone are popular utilization soups.  (Any vegetable, tomato product/sauce or pasta can be added to make a tasty Minestrone)  Baked Potato soup is another great utilization soup – any of these can be added: bacon, cheese, broccoli, sauteed onions.  Be creative!  Remember, a third soup can be a smaller quantity than the other two.  It’s just to use any leftover, overproduced product.  It can be served in only one cafe, or at a busy coffee bar, satellite area.

Rollover unused, brewed coffee into an iced product. Enhance by mixing with half and half or with flavored syrups.  This can be served from a bulk container (carafe, airpot, etc.) or cupped and sold in the grab-n-go reach-in.  If you have a slushy machine – frozen coffee is a nice summertime treat.

Eliminate hotel pans – go to smaller attractive merchandisers such as Bon Chef or Fiestaware.  It lowers merchandising pars, maintains freshness, and improves guest appeal.

If you have the ability – get and use a blast chiller to maximize your ability to chill and reuse leftover food items.

Special Hints and Tips for our Healthcare audience:

Make patient salads to order, specifically fruit salads. Maintain fruit as a separate components rather than commingling in the cup during prep.  Mix the salad for each customer to maintain freshness and avoid bleeding flavors.  Individual fruit can then be reused in other items.  Pineapple for the ham entree, orange segments in a compound salad.  They can even be placed on the salad bar as fruit salad.

Save broths prepared for special diets (low sodium, etc.) and incorporate with purchased bases or house made stock to prepare cafe soups.  Unused broths can be frozen and added to the cafe soups at a later date.  Or, build your menu to take advantage of each previous day’s overages.

Overproduced rice from the tray line – reuse in a cafe entree by sauteeing rice with veggies, make the classic fried rice, or add to soups.

Plan for a third soup each day from leftovers (a utilization item).  A third soup can be a small quantity.  It can be served in only one cafe, or at a busy coffee bar, satellite area.