Food Waste Focus

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 [...]

LeanPath recently provided the following guest post for Computrition’s Great X-Change blog. What would you do if you observed someone carrying a bag brimming with dozens of $20 bills out of your operation toward the loading dock?   Confront them?  Call the police? Take a photo? No doubt, you’d do something.  Pronto. Yet, in most foodservice [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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.

Which foodservice waste items qualify as “compostable?” The answer depends on who will handle the composting – keep in mind that many commercial composters handle yard waste but cannot or will not accept food. Those that do handle food waste will usually accept all food waste (pre-consumer and post-consumer) as well as plant-based compostable disposables [...]

Soon after you start tracking food waste you run into a question about units of measure.  Do I want to track weight, servings, each/count, or volume.  The answer is to track waste in the form that makes the most sense for that item and then convert it to a common metric for comparison purposes.  For [...]

We just received these great Hints and Tips from some of our newest accounts.  We would like to share them with you: “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 [...]

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 [...]