Institutional kitchens face a universal challenge when it comes to pre-consumer food waste. This is particularly true in culinary education environments where trial, error, and experimentation are necessary for skill development. However, a recent study conducted at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) by the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative (MCURC) and Leanpath, a MCURC Research Innovation Affiliate, offers insights that extend far beyond the classroom.

You know the scene: food goes off-site for an event. Maybe you have a food waste tracker in your kitchen, maybe not. Regardless, there’s no way to realistically get the overproduced food back to the kitchen to be tracked. So it gets thrown away off-site: no tracking, no reporting, no accountability.

Leanpath recently crossed the threshold of 200 million pounds (91 million kg) of food waste prevented since our founding in 2004. What does 200 million pounds of food waste actually look like?

At Leanpath, we are thrilled to announce the launch of our newest feature: Consumption Tracking and Reporting. For years, the industry has relied on total food waste weight as the primary metric for success. However, weight alone doesn’t always tell the whole story. To truly master your kitchen’s efficiency and solve the overproduction puzzle, you must understand how much food you made in the first place.