Food Waste Intelligence

As soon as the COVID-19 pandemic reached the U.S., Vidant Medical Center in eastern North Carolina began to prepare for the potential of overcrowding, supply chain interruptions, and overwhelming strain on the staff. To support the patients and staff, Vidant’s dining services team jumped in to adapt their operations. “Our customer base dropped dramatically almost overnight,” said Troy Sheppard, Food & Nutrition Service Line Administrator and Client Executive with Sodexo, which provides dining operations for Vidant Health system. Incre...

An ambitious new resource to help understand the problem of food waste in the United States ranked food waste tracking as the most financially impactful solution foodservice organizations can leverage. Launched by the nonprofit ReFED, the new Insights Engine builds on the group’s landmark 2016 study, A Roadmap to Reduce U.S. Food Waste by 20%. Like in that earlier report, preventing food waste (which food waste tracking enables) remains the focus of the Insights Engine.

Peels, pulp, cores, rinds, stems. When you prep fruits and vegetables you end up with trim. And for the majority of kitchens using Leanpath, trim waste ranks as their second biggest source of waste (behind overproduction). But that trim doesn’t have to lead to trim waste. You can maximize usage of this product, making better use of your food spend along the way. Remember, you paid for that rind, so why just throw it out? Here are 18 ideas to get better use out of that often overlooked and underutilized fruit and vegetable trim.

Mount Holyoke College started tracking food waste with Leanpath in October of 2019. And then, well, the world changed. For the safety of the community the majority of the students were asked to leave in the spring. The college reopened in August with only 150 students on campus. The private women’s college in Massachusetts, USA, typically has a student body of 2,200. “But the college wanted to make sure those students got a great dining program, and they also wanted to keep as many of our foodservice staff employed as possible,” expla...

Despite the many challenges the foodservice industry faced in 2020, kitchens around the world working with Leanpath still prevented 12 million pounds (or 5 million kilos) of food from being wasted last year. A significant bright spot in an otherwise dark year. This takes Leanpath’s total for the past 6 years alone to 61 million pounds (28 million kilos) of food waste prevented. As we often say, food waste is a nexus issue: when you prevent food waste from happening you also address some of the most pressing environmental problems we f...