Food Waste Intelligence

The world is wasting 1.05 billion tons of food a year, amounting to 132 kilograms per capita and almost one-fifth of all food available to consumers. The foodservice industry is responsible for 28 percent of this waste. Those were some of the findings of the UN Environment Programme’s Food Waste Index Report 2024, which calculated food waste for the most recent year data is available, 2022.

Leanpath has a team of executive chefs on staff who travel the world training kitchens on how to prevent food waste. They’re constantly collecting new ideas on best practices in food waste prevention and sharing them right here on our blog. To celebrate Food Waste Prevention Week (April 1-7 2024) we’ve collected 10 of those posts that are bursting with tips and ideas on how foodservice teams can become more profitable and sustainable by preventing food waste. Dig in!

East Carolina University Medical Center’s Beaufort Hospital is a 142-bed healthcare campus in Washington, North Carolina, USA. Food and nutrition services are operated by Sodexo and overseen by General Manager Denise M. Hewitt and Executive Chef John Jacob Phillips (above at his Leanpath Tracker). The team has successfully reduced its kitchen waste by 53 percent since implementing the Leanpath program in 2020. Expanding on that success, beginning in 2023, they started using their program to track plate waste from patient trays, and wi...

In 2018, Sodexo announced the largest deployment of automated food waste prevention technology in the world, with the plan to roll out WasteWatch powered by Leanpath at 3,000 of its sites worldwide, with the goal of cutting its food waste in half by 2025. To achieve this level of impact requires strong leadership at a regional level. To learn more about what it takes to drive regional commitment and results, we spoke with Sodexo’s Regional Project Manager and Leanpath Champion for the Middle East and Africa, Umesh Jaiswar. Umesh overs...

In our recent Leanpath/US Foods webinar, How Metz Culinary Prevents Food Waste, chefs Timothy Morris and Zach Walrath talked through their strategies for reducing plate waste. Check out the webinar excerpt above to learn their tactics for educating diners and managing portion control --while still delighting customers--to drop plate waste by 25-30%. Watch the full webinar here to learn more tips and strategies.