Food Waste Intelligence

Pop quiz: you run a busy hospital kitchen, and one of your food suppliers calls you up to ask why your spend with them has decreased since last year. What do you tell them?

If you’re Nuno Matias, Head of Catering at NHS Royal Brompton Hospital, you tell them you’re spending less because you’re not throwing as much of their product away - as a result of managing your food waste with Leanpath.

Nuno and his team have fully embraced Leanpath across their whole catering operation, and their results have been excellent. Cost pressure on NHS spending continues to grow, and the new National Standards for healthcare food and drink are driving increased focus on food efficiency. Nuno addresses these issues by using Leanpath to track and reduce food waste on the hospital’s wards, in his production kitchen and his staff and visitor restaurant.

I caught up with him to understand how he gets the best out of Leanpath.

Tell me about your results and what’s driving them

Since we started Leanpath we have reduced our food waste by 40 percent, which we think is a great achievement. Our Leanpath Coach, Chef Ben, has helped a lot, and the platform is so easy to use. It’s really simplified our food waste control. We have implemented a lot of improvements under some key principles:

We’ve made it comprehensive and simple, and organised ourselves so that all ward trolleys, kitchen waste and restaurant waste are tracked in the same spot. Before any food is thrown away the team track it with Leanpath.

We’ve built a great data set; we get a monthly waste report from our contractor: previously I might have seen a figure of, say 2,500 kilos but I wouldn’t know anything about it. Now with Leanpath I know what that waste is, why and when it was thrown away, how much it costs, and where it came from- ward trolley waste, restaurant waste, plate waste or waste from kitchen prep. That figure is now 1,000 kilos less per month on average.

We talk about waste every day. It’s become something that’s embedded in our system - and not just myself. The Head Chef is on it, the Supervisor is on it and the staff are on it - we all make it part of our daily work schedule. For example, we noticed via Leanpath that a lot of waste was coming in from the restaurant in the evenings. We made a plan together and moved to smaller containers for some items in the restaurant, and now waste is constantly kept at a bare minimum there. Simple enough, but it made us realise that we really can control food waste - before it wasn’t something that we properly understood or talked about; we maybe saw 17 portions coming from the counters but we weren’t recording it in kilos and value. Now we do, and I'm happy because we can continuously control our waste.

I always involve everybody: management, supervisors and my staff. They see I’m involved so they get involved as well. It’s basically being the example - if my manager does it then I should. We also show staff why we’re doing this; in our meetings we talk about the role of waste reduction on carbon emissions and the environment, as well as the cost of food.

How has your team responded?

At first they asked me if we were cutting the amount of food we serve. I said, “No. We're not reducing food, we are just making sure that we're not throwing it away and that we use it.” I make sure that everyone’s opinion on waste is heard and valued so they actually come to me with waste reduction ideas! It's so important to get them involved and it brings big benefits.

Crucially, I have removed blame from the conversation, so now if someone sees waste they come to me and say, “We wasted this much” or “We cooked too much” or “We took too much to the wards.” They really understand that if we are cooking too much there's a cost involved. That’s a big shift. Before they weren’t thinking about it, just focusing on making enough food for the patients. Now they understand that if you're taking extra to the wards and you're not using that food then it’s going into the bin. And if you multiply that food for 365 days this is the amount [we’re wasting each year]. When they saw that they were like, “Wow!”

Obviously, we understand that we can’t reduce food waste to zero because that means we risk running out at some point, but our Leanpath data helps us understand how much we should cook. For example, today is Governance Day. There are not many appointments so less visitors in the restaurant, and we have an opportunity to optimise production quantities.. There's likely to be a bit of extra left over, but at the end of the day it's about constantly understanding why waste happens and what we can do to reduce it.  

What other practical changes have you made using your Leanpath data?

Reuse. We identify products with no impact on food safety, like potatoes and other vegetables. Sometimes we know that we're going to have too much food and we can act earlier. So communication between retail staff and the chefs is very important. If it's an hour before close and we still have an extra tray of shepherd’s pie we can blast chill and use it as an extra the day after.

We still get overproduction, but now if we know we're not going to use it we can blast chill it for supper or it can be used the next day. Vegetables, rice and side dishes are a constant focus for us. For example rice; in terms of food safety, it’s difficult to utilise again so we make fried rice with the cooked product. Vegetables get used for soups as well so if we can blast chill and reuse them we do.

How have you measured success?

I put my monthly total food costs into Leanpath and that generates a report which tells me what percentage of my food I am throwing away, which is really useful; we’re currently at about 2.8 percent. I send the food waste reports to my line manager each month and that gets shared with hospital and Trust directors. I'm also involved with the Trust’s Environment Group on food waste so our efforts reach a wide audience!

Ward waste is a big issue across the NHS; how are you addressing that?

Altogether we have seven NHS wards and one private ward plus [Adult Intensive Care Unit & Paediatric Intensive Care Unit]. In terms of patient waste, we track patient trolley waste and plate waste. Our ordering tablets can now specify small, standard and large portions so the patients have a choice. Small portions don’t impact on protein, more on the sides so we adjust portions of that and so reduce our plate waste. Obviously some plate waste is unavoidable, but I compare figures each month, so if there’s a spike we go to the wards and speak with patients to understand why. Leanpath enables us to be really responsive like that.

What about the trolley waste? How are you reducing that?

Before, we used to send up a half container with around 12 portions even if a ward only asked for two. But after looking at our waste data we switched to smaller containers with six or three portions and much less extra, so that was one of the big impacts in terms of reducing trolley waste. We also focus on dishing up the food exactly per the portion size requests so they're not sending up too much food. Again, communication is key: we are now getting better information about patients who are nil by mouth or discharged just before service; if our staff know in advance we can use that data to forecast and produce better.

We also change menus using our patient trolley and plate waste data, removing items that aren’t popular, an approach that works well in our restaurant too.

Has it saved you money?

Well, let’s just say my overall food costs haven’t gone up in the last two years - even though food prices went up significantly last year, and I’m serving 25 percent more in my restaurant.  In fact, I’m spending the same money that I was three years ago because by using Leanpath we have optimised purchasing and production.

One of my suppliers even sent me an email saying, “Your spend with us is less than half what it was last year. What’s changed?” I told him we’re now recording our waste and making operational changes so we don’t need to order so much from them. He wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.

What's the feedback from the Trust’s leadership?

They are impressed. I present my waste report monthly and it’s always well-received. The Trust Environment Panel also sees the results and teams from other Trusts come to see what we’re doing differently because they want to know how to produce this kind of result. Obviously, it’s easier for us because we have centralised our waste collection in the kitchen and it’s so easy to track.

You mentioned you found it easy to do your ERIC returns (NHS annual waste reporting) because of Leanpath: tell me more about that

Well, I just put in the dates I want in Leanpath reporting and it gives me exactly what I need. It took me about five minutes to do my ERIC report this year. I didn't even know how to report it previously; we used an average of waste from our waste contractor reports. Now I can say my trolley waste is this or my patient plate or retail waste is that because it’s all categorised.

What’s your advice to any other catering managers who are thinking of doing this?

Having centralised locations where all food waste can come to will help a lot. Get all the staff involved in understanding why you’re doing it and how, because once everybody knows it’s part of their work schedule the staff really get involved. But for me the most important thing is that the Catering Manager needs to lead by example. If they do that the team will follow.