Lori Anderson from Iowa Health St. Luke’s Hospital noted in the Des Moines Register:

“It was unbelievable the amount of food that was wasted. It might be just a little here or a little there, but it added up to be quite a bit in dollars.”

Both stories provide great studies showing how tracking food waste daily is the key to preventing and minimizing food waste:

• Des Moines Register: Program reduces food heading to the landfill
• Cedar Rapids Gazette: St. Luke’s cutting waste and saving money with a pair of food management programs

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.

The story explains how Iowa Health has used automated food waste tracking systems to reduce food waste significantly.

This story supports a core principal of waste management:  prevention and minimization should be our top priorities.  To achieve these goals, we need lots of good data, otherwise we don’t know what to fix or whether our fixes are actually working.  For this reason, automated food waste tracking systems (such as those from LeanPath) are playing an ever more important role in foodservice operations.

The hospital team learned so much from their experience reducing waste that they could respond easily when the asked for strategies that consumers could use at home to reduce food waste.

How has Iowa Health tackled source reduction of food waste?

By implementing automated food waste tracking systems from LeanPath, recording pre-consumer food waste data every day.  Iowa Health uses this data to tighten menus, production procedures and purchasing, thereby minimizing and preventing as much food waste as possible.

Iowa Health just published a case study in their in-house magazine titled Hospital Chefs Trimming Costs at the Cutting Board.   Read the article to learn how high volume foodservice operators can make a significant dent in food waste by tracking food waste as a regular, ongoing part of their business.

The winner in the “Good Neighbor” category was the Nutrition and Food Services Team at the VA Medical Center in Martinsburg, West Virginia.  They were recognized for the totality of their sustainability efforts, which include a food waste prevention program called Waste Watchers.  From the news release:

Good Neighbor Award: Nutrition and Food Services Team, Department of Veterans Affairs, Martinsburg, W.Va. VA’s Martinsburg Medical Center’s Nutrition and Food Services’ Green Kitchen brought together local farmers, VA staff and veterans to bring healthy, locally grown foods from veteran-owned farming businesses to the cafeteria. This initiative decreased landfill food waste by 86 percent, contributed 265 pounds of weekly food donations to a non-profit veteran’s transitional housing group and increased collection of food waste for composting. In addition, the project’s efficient kitchen equipment and operations improved energy and water conservation.

LeanPath is proud to have partnered with the nutrition team in Martinsburg on their Waste Watchers effort.  They use LeanPath food waste tracking tools to measure all pre-consumer food waste, and this has helped them reduce waste by over 80%.

Read the full story on the GreenGov Presidential Awards.

Also view a TV news story detailing the food waste reduction strategies and successes in Martinsburg: “Extra Food Goes to Farmers, Non-Profits Instead of Garbage – Your4State.com“

The food section of the web site discusses waste as one of the key trends to be addressed by healthcare executives.  It also offers several specific actions that foodservice operators can take to reduce food waste.

This guide is a useful top-level resource for healthcare food and nutrition operators.  But it will also help foodservice managers working in most any high-volume operation who want to share a quick summary of sustainability concepts with their superiors, colleagues, or staff.

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.

Initial Expectations

The team at Riverside has been using the LeanPath system since June 2009. When they started the program they were hopeful that it would be able to reduce their food costs and waste. “This is especially important considering the current economic climate and the continued drive to do more with less. The system has allowed us to identify some products that were in need of replacement or general system improvement around their production.”

Experience with Waste Tracking

Her overall impression: “[LeanPath's] ValuWaste is great. It helps to raise the awareness for the associates and gives them a chance to contribute ideas to improve the operation. That is an aspect that we pride ourselves in as an organization, so it fit in with our culture. Another component that she enjoys about the LeanPath system, “It is very efficient to process the data and gain action steps so that keeps it achievable”.

“I think it is the right tool for the job. Prior to this, we were manually tracking waste which was very time consuming”. Because of the detailed reports, Jill was able to see how much food was being wasted due to expiration. “With The Joint Commission expectations on holding times, we need to utilize any remaining products or split cases quickly and safely. With an operation of our size, these items were adding up quickly”. She feels that when you look at what a wasted item costs in a week and then take the time to annualize it, you can really see the impact this has on your budget. (One of the features of ValuWaste Advantage 4 is a dashboard that shows how much food is wasted per week and what that adds up to over a full year.)

Recommendations

Her advice to managers new to the LeanPath system is to stay consistent with the program so the associates stay with it. “Make the information a part of associate meetings and recognize them for participating. We build the participation expectation into the annual evaluation review”.

Takeaways

Jill’s initial goal was to reduce food cost. Was this achieved? “When we started the program in June [2009], we were over 8% unfavorable on food cost compared to our budget. We are currently 10% favorable to budget for our YTD”.

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.

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.