Food Waste Intelligence

Aramark Regional Executive Chef Damon Mangano oversees the food and nutrition services at a large Midwestern healthcare system running 11 hospitals. Tracking and preventing food waste with Leanpath since 2017, the system’s kitchens have reduced their cumulative waste 50%.

Chef Damon says from the start, his chefs were startled by the cost of the food they were wasting, which teams see in the Leanpath system as soon as items are tracked.

“From the very start, when cooks saw what the food waste was costing, folk were saying things like, ‘That’s $5000 in a year. Wow, imagine all the stuff we could buy if we didn’t throw that chicken away every night.’”

Food waste is a $1 trillion global problem. And roughly one quarter of that waste is coming from foodservice--a significant source of lost profits for the industry.

The cost of food waste is typically equated with the purchase cost of that wasted food, which makes sense. But the true cost of food waste has to also factor in the cost of the labor used in inventorying, preparing, serving and ultimately discarding that food waste. 

Right now, the world is experiencing a massive labor shortage, the impact of which is falling particularly hard on foodservice. It is a time to remain vigilant about food waste. Because when labor is tight, the pain is particularly acute when a kitchen dedicates staff time prepping food that only goes to waste.

It’s been an exciting, and pivotal, couple of weeks as world leaders, policymakers, business leaders, and concerned citizens gathered in Glasgow for COP26 – the Conference of the Parties to focus global efforts on emissions reduction. And while we prepare to analyze the final outcomes of the sessions, the need to sharply reduce emissions across all meaningful contributing sectors is beyond question.

The U.S.-based National Association of College and University Food Service (NACUFS) put food waste as the top sustainability priority among a list of 10 pressing issues in their newly released Sustainability Guide. Recognizing the broad impact of addressing food waste, the guide states, “When the reduction of food waste occurs, climate change, water scarcity, and hunger are impacted, in addition to operational savings.”

The University of Rochester in New York State has 14 dining locations operated by the contract management firm Harvest Table Culinary Group. The program has been run for 16 years by Senior Executive Chef Tony Pignagrande.

The university began tracking and preventing food waste with Leanpath in 2017, leading to a reduction in food waste of 46 percent, and helping the team achieve two corporate goals of conserving resources and reducing carbon emissions.