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.

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 operations, this very situation plays out every day without getting anyone’s attention.   I’m referring to the bags of pre-consumer food waste you throw away daily due to overproduction.  Make no mistake:  these bags may look like waste but they’re actually filled with your precious cash.   Overproduction eats away at your budget due to food, labor, energy, and disposal costs.

What can you do to control overproduction and get these dollars out of the garbage?

First, you can turn to your production automation system such as Computrition’s Foodservice Operations Management (FOM) solution to record your actual production usage for the central elements of your menu.   This allows the software to predict the popularity of specific items relative to other portions of your cycle menu the next time you offer it, commonly referred to as the menu mix.

Second– and this is very high impact – you can add a new system alongside your core production automation system:  an automated food waste tracking system such as those we offer at LeanPath.   You use this system to quickly and easily track all your pre-consumer food waste (not plate scrapings) daily using a scale connected to a touch-screen terminal.  It’s extremely easy to do and studies show it has no labor impact.  Food waste tracking allows you to see every bit of waste that is costing you money.  From overproduction to inefficient trimming, or spoilage due to poor FIFO practices to trim waste due to careless cutting of fruit – all of which can be reduced easily, once the challenge is identified.

By tracking all your food waste, you have the ability to precisely diagnose problem areas in production and provide extra staff training.  You also get data which allows you to baseline your progress on reducing food waste over time.  And, most importantly, every staff member begins to pay attention to waste because they become accountable for tracking it.  Waste is no longer the “Chef’s problem”; it represents an opportunity for the entire team to improve and make a difference.

Once you begin tracking food waste, you have the opportunity to use your production automation systems to solve problems.  For example, if soup is constantly overproduced, you can make sure to input data about soup popularity so the production system can help forecast more precisely the next time around.

Often people wonder if they need a food waste tracking system if they have a production automation system.  The answer is yes.  The two systems complement and support each other while each offering a distinct solution.  Production automation gives you the power to plan and manage recipes, menus, inventory, purchasing and production.   It essentially helps you build the best possible purchasing and production “game plan.”

Yet, we all know that the game plan often doesn’t get executed correctly because of staff behavior.  People don’t always follow the plan, instead defaulting to their instincts or whatever seems easiest to them.  That leads to padding of forecasts, excess use of raw materials, non-adherence to recipes, ultimately equating to increased costs.

Food waste tracking systems close the gap between a production systems’ “Game Plan” and the actual behavior of staff.  By tracking what actually goes into the garbage every day, including spoilage, trim waste, expiration, burned items, and of course the greatest pre-consumer food waste, overproduction, food waste tracking shows areas for improvement, allowing you to step back to the root causes and address them.  Sometimes the issue is a forecast, but most often it’s about focusing staff behavior in the correct areas.

It’s critical that food waste tracking be deployed in a positive way – it cannot be used in a punitive manner.   Rather, getting the staff involved in tracking gives them an ownership stake in the improvement.   There are many ways to get them engaged in this, but we will leave that for a future post.

Bottom-line:  you can reduce costs dramatically by pairing production automation systems with automated food waste tracking systems.  Their symbiotic partnership assists operations in driving out inefficiencies and driving additional savings through to the bottom line.  You may be able to save 2-4% — or more — on food purchases, simply by adding simple food waste tracking to your existing production automation systems.  The proof is in the scaled, calculated and quite delicious pudding.

If you are a Computrition customer and want to learn more about this topic, please click here to register for one of two free webinars:

• October 26^th at 1:00pm Pacific / 4pm Eastern: Register
• October 27^th at 10:00am Pacific / 1pm Eastern: Register

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.

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.

Download Practice Greenhealth Guide here: Composting 10StepGuide

Practice Greenhealth offers many other excellent resources on waste management. Visit their site at www.practicegreenhealth.org.

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 (e.g. items made from plant materials such as corn, potato, cellulose, soy and sugar).

These waste streams should be free from contamination, and any disposable ware should be BPI-certified as compostable. The BPI “Compostable Label” indicates an item meets one of two science-based ASTM standards. To qualify as compostable, the item must break down into carbon dioxide, water and biomass at the same rate as paper. The final product needs to disintegrate to established levels, cannot exceed toxicity limits and must be able to support plant life. Some commercial composters have more stringent requirements than the BPI label, so check your compostable disposable choices with your composting partner to be certain.

Keep in mind: just because an item claims it is “biodegradable” does not mean it is “compostable.”

Resources:

• Biodegradable Products Institute

• Healthcare Without Harm Guide to Bio-based Service Ware

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 example:

Weight is a measure that can apply to all food categories. By converting to weight you have the ability to compare food waste by different sources. It’s also easy to get a scale to weight many items at the time you are throwing them away. (or to get an automated tracking system)

To do this, you must figure out an easy way to convert volume, serving and each measurements into weights. The conversion will be different for each item, of course (e.g. the density of soup and water, while both liquid, are very different).

A great tool to help set conversion standards for different foods is this online converter. It takes into account the different densities of food items in providing a volume-to-weight conversion.

“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.

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 waste issues that vary day-to-day due to variances in staffing, customers, schedules, and modes of operation.  Once you see a day with a waste spike, you can drill into it and figure out why its occurring.

For example, an operator reviewed a Waste by Day of Week report (they use an automated waste tracking system that provides this type of report with click of the button) and discovered that Wednesday was the day with the most waste – by a wide margin.

They then drilled into the detailed information for Wednesday and found that their waste was coming from all stations other than “Expo Cooking”.  (This is an action station that does ‘made to order’ dishes.)  They realized the Expo Cooking program (which occurred only on Wednesday and drew 600+ orders) was drawing customers away from the standing menu items at other stations and leading to much more waste at those stations.  Solution?  The chef adjusted production forecasts for the other stations on Wednesday and brought waste down dramatically.

Click here to view this report:  http://www.leanpath.com/nwsltr/fff6/dayweek.htm

Take a look at your stations, product mix, sales and especially your waste tracking sheets.  What do you see happening from day to day?  What is the reason for this?  Can something be changed to reduce the amount of waste occurring on the ‘high’ day?