Food Waste Intelligence

The foodservice operation at Mt. San Antonio Gardens, a retirement community in California, is run by Sodexo, and serves 1,500 covers a day with buffet and tableside service. The kitchen team, led by General Manager Jack Forrest, began using Waste Watch Powered by Leanpath to track and prevent food waste in 2020. They’ve already prevented 56 percent of their food waste.

Sodexo, through its foodservice work at Good Samaritan Medical Center, in Lafayette, Colorado, is a national award winner in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencies 2021 Food Recovery Challenge competition. Sodexo won the award for its work preventing food waste with Leanpath.

“Our success with waste reduction throughout the COVID-19 pandemic is truly a testament to our team and their resiliency, consistency, and hard work,” said Natosha Jergensen, General Manager, Sodexo at Good Samaritan Medical Center. “We believe sustainability isn't just a trend, and we are committed to improving our efforts daily. We see it as our mission now and in the future.”

UVA Dine, operated by Aramark, has been tracking food waste with Leanpath since 2018. The team has racked up impressive results using the program, including reducing their food waste by 59%. They have achieved these results by using tracking data to identify food waste instances and trends and addressing them with their kitchen teams.

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. Increased staffing demands created further challenges, as self-serve food lines were converted to staffed stations and heightened sanitation protocols required more labor time. A shifted focus on quick service dining changed the norm even further.

Changing operations and supporting the staff in a pandemic didn’t mean the Sodexo team would abandon their sustainability commitments. On the contrary, Sodexo has continued rolling out its food waste prevention platform, WasteWatch powered by Leanpath (WWxLP), globally, despite the pandemic. WWxLP has deployed at 732 Sodexo sites, including 188 healthcare sites in the US, nearly all since the onset of COVID-19. More than 1,200 Sodexo kitchens globally are currently in the program.

Swedish is the largest non-profit healthcare provider in the Puget Sound, Washington, area. Six of its dispersed facilities utilize the Leanpath platform to prevent food waste. The healthcare foodservice operation at its First Hill campus is run by Corporate Executive Chef Zachary Schwab. First Hill typically has about 1,800 covers a day in patient services, with 600 meals a day retail and around 10 catered events. Schwab has overseen food waste reduction with Leanpath since 2007. That experience has led to the development of system-wide best practices and deep cuts in food waste: a 53 percent reduction in food waste by value and a 40 percent reduction by weight.