Food Waste Focus

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 step can reveal [...]

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 [...]

In February 2010, we wrote a post about Food Holidays as possible reuse opportunities.  We had great response and wanted to continue posting about these for this month and next. We mention these holidays, because they are fun (of course!), but also because incorporating these dates into your menu can help to reduce food waste [...]

The ‘A-ha’ moment.  It’s that very second when something becomes suddenly obvious to you.  You didn’t realize it before, but you do now.  That a-ha moment takes place throughout life in many different areas.  Today we want to talk about those a-ha moments in food service. We have been speaking with a lot of customers [...]

Just a quick post to let everyone know that you can now get LeanPath and ValuWaste merchandise for your operations.  Many of you have asked about purchasing different items to give out as reward and recognition awards for the staff. Please feel free to visit this site anytime:  http://shop.cafepress.com/leanpath All merchandise has either the LeanPath [...]