Food Waste Focus

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 [...]

Have you seen it yet?  The new Ziploc commercial on food waste? Ziploc is a company that for many years has promoted their products as keeping your food fresh, longer.  But now they have created a new commercial that talks about the financial perils of not storing food properly.  In their latest commercial they have [...]

LeanPath coaches speak with clients on a regular basis.  Often we learn new information that can help others reduce waste and we like to share those Hints and Tips with you.  When reviewing data with clients often we see spikes in pre-consumer waste that are explained by: “sunny day”, “snow day”, “ice storm”, etc. Keeping an eye on the atmosphere can help you [...]

We know about big food holidays – Christmas, Easter, Passover, Ramadan (fried honey donuts!).  We know about other holidays that include a particular type of food in their celebrations like St. Valentine’s Day (chocolate), St. Patrick’s (green beer, green cookies, green everything), Oktoberfest (beer).  But what about those ‘other’ food holidays? You see them sometimes [...]

LeanPath coaches speak with clients on a regular basis.  Often we learn new information that can help others reduce waste and we like to share those Hints and Tips with you.  Having a proper review and re-use policy goes along way toward making sure that items are safely stored and then re-utilized in an operation.  Sites often do a good job are keeping [...]

We ran across this cool calculator today and wanted to pass it along.  Originally intended for K-12 school foodservice, it can be applied to most other foodservice groups (hospitals, university, corporate dining) with a little adjustment. The Oklahoma Department of Agriculture created this produce calculator so that when a foodservice director  says, “I need enough [...]

When an operator starts monitoring food waste on the different stations, they often find that the salad bar has more waste than expected. Two good questions to ask are: What is the least popular item on your salad bar?  What’s the most popular? Least Popular: What doesn’t sell?  Why?  The change of seasons is often [...]

LeanPath coaches speak with clients on a regular basis.  Often we learn new information that can help others reduce waste and we like to share those Hints and Tips with you.  Eggs are an item we often see high on our clients initial reports. Eggs are an item often mass produced in the morning and if focused on by the [...]