Hatfield's Dining Hall is one of the busiest foodservice outlets on the West Virginia University campus. Operated by Elior North America, the company manages roughly 30 foodservice locations across WVU. Hatfield's serves resident students approximately 15,000 meals per week across seven all-you-care-to-eat stations including a salad bar, grill, pasta, soup, a deli, and a rotating concept the team calls “street food.”

With that kind of volume and variety, food waste can hide in plain sight. In November 2025, Executive Chef Michael Labastida and Foodservice Director Aaron Banks brought Leanpath into Hatfield's to find out exactly where, and how much.

Why Food Waste Prevention Matters at WVU

For Labastida, the case for tracking starts with the bottom line. Knowing the dollar value of what goes in the bin keeps the business aligned, and shows the team exactly where money is pouring out. For Banks, the financial case is only half the story.

“There's also the sustainability part of it,” says Banks. “We work with the university's sustainability office, and they love seeing the report that says, here are the strides we've made to reduce waste or repurpose it. You're always looking out for the planet. The less of a toll we put on it, the better off we're all going to be.”

The Surprise in the Data: It Wasn't the Proteins

Like most operators, the Hatfield's team assumed their biggest waste risk was expensive animal proteins such as chicken, beef, and turkey. Leanpath's data told a different story.

“As operators and chefs, when we think about controlling waste, we always think about the expensive proteins,” explains Banks. “But we discovered vegetables were our number one wasted food. Getting that information was our biggest gain, and those pennies add up to dollars.”

Labastida was struck by how quickly small amounts compounded. A pan of waste that looks insignificant in a single meal period becomes a major cost when it happens consistently. Day after day, a pattern becomes visible when every transaction is tracked.

From Insight to Action: Batch Cooking, Radios, and Daily Huddles

Armed with the data, the team rebuilt their production habits around vegetables. Because most vegetables cook in 15 to 20 minutes, the team shifted to batch cooking, focused on smaller quantities more often instead of producing everything at once, and letting real-time demand drive the next batch.

That approach depends on fast communication, which is a genuine challenge at Hatfield's. The dining hall spans two floors connected by a shared service elevator. Rather than sending staff up and down to check station levels, Banks equipped the leaders on each floor with radios.

“Instead of getting on the elevator,” he says, “it's just, ‘Hey Mike, I need more green beans,’ or ‘What's the situation on the chicken?’ It's been a huge help in controlling production.”

The team also reviews Leanpath data in its daily huddles, asking pointed questions about the previous day. What happened with the vegetables? Did we fire too much? Was an item logged as landfill when it was actually repurposed? Because dispositions can be corrected right in the Leanpath mobile app, the huddle doubles as a data-quality check and a coaching moment.

Alongside Leanpath, the team posts daily guest counts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on a production calendar. Now cooks never have to guess how much to make.

Repurposing, Powered by a Flexible Menu

The other pillar of Hatfield's waste reduction is aggressive, creative repurposing, made possible by a menu the team can change daily, even on the spot. Leftover scrambled eggs become breakfast burritos. Excess turkey returns to the menu two days later. A surplus flank steak gets carved fresh at a station instead of being locked into a single steak-and-potatoes entrée.

The street food station has become the operation's repurposing engine. Its rotating, globally inspired format means yesterday's surplus can become today's feature. Corn left over from another station reappears as fiesta corn or street corn on a Mexican-themed day.

“We can repurpose what we used on the other stations. It's a very versatile, fluid station. It's a really great tool,” says Banks.

A Team That Owns the Numbers

None of this works without buy-in from the culinary team, and the Hatfield's leaders built it deliberately. Nothing about the program is kept secret. Waste results are posted on the wall for everyone to see, and frontline staff do the tracking themselves. Everyone can see the direct results of their own actions, whether the operation wasted $100 in a day, or 25 cents. The transparency has turned waste reduction into a friendly competition, with cooks comparing results and challenging each other.

One cook, Tito, has become the program's unofficial champion. He pushes to keep no more than a single pan in the warmers, scouts the walk-ins for repurposing opportunities, and comes to the chef with menu changes already worked out.

“He'll come to me and say, ‘Hey, we're going to repurpose this,can we change the menu in the next few days?’” says Labastida. “He comes up with all the answers already. We let the team know, if there's an abundance of leftovers, look ahead and make a change. It's only going to make your job easier, because the prep is already done.”

Technology Built for the Pace of a 15,000-Meal Week

Hatfield's tracks on Leanpath's latest bench scale with an AI-powered integrated camera, and the team credits the hardware with making tracking fast enough to stick in a high-volume kitchen. Leanpath's Boost AI reads the camera image and suggests the most likely items, cutting transaction time dramatically.

“It's so much easier with the camera because it's faster,” says Banks. “When you're feeding 15,000 people in a week, you don't always have 30 minutes to manually track waste.

The photos do more than speed up logging. Labastida reviews them in the Leanpath app and flags images to discuss in huddles or send to his sous chefs. Why was this pork thrown away? Why did we make so much? The photos surface issues, identify exactly which menu item was wasted, and turn every transaction into a coachable moment.

The Results: 46% Less Food Waste

Since beginning tracking in November 2025, the Hatfield's team has cut food waste by 46%, a dramatic reduction in one of the largest resident dining operations on campus. Asked what he'd tell a skeptical peer, Banks points out that number.

“I'd start with the fact we dropped it by 46%,” says Banks. “Anybody worth their weight in an operation is always trying to be more efficient, and food is one of the biggest expenses we have.”

“It's an easy tool, it's not rocket science,” says Labastida. “It's only going to benefit you, your team, and your financials. You'll know where you wasted, and be able to adjust your production levels. Don't knock it till you try it, and here's the proof in the pudding.”