Food Waste Intelligence

It’s clear that an organization is doing pioneering work in the food system when the President and the Vice President come to participate, as occurred at DC Central Kitchen (DCCK) just before Thanksgiving.

And we agree.

Leanpath has been proud to partner with DCCK for the past three years through our Leanpath 12.3 initiative, supporting the organization’s transformative work to address hunger and poverty through job training and job creation since its founding by Robert Egger over 30 years ago (read more about DCCK’s history here). 

We’re united by powerful, complementary, and systemic change-focused missions around food.

Aramark Regional Executive Chef Damon Mangano oversees the food and nutrition services at a large Midwestern healthcare system running 11 hospitals. Tracking and preventing food waste with Leanpath since 2017, the system’s kitchens have reduced their cumulative waste 50%.

Chef Damon says from the start, his chefs were startled by the cost of the food they were wasting, which teams see in the Leanpath system as soon as items are tracked.

“From the very start, when cooks saw what the food waste was costing, folk were saying things like, ‘That’s $5000 in a year. Wow, imagine all the stuff we could buy if we didn’t throw that chicken away every night.’”

Food waste is a $1 trillion global problem. And roughly one quarter of that waste is coming from foodservice--a significant source of lost profits for the industry.

The cost of food waste is typically equated with the purchase cost of that wasted food, which makes sense. But the true cost of food waste has to also factor in the cost of the labor used in inventorying, preparing, serving and ultimately discarding that food waste. 

Right now, the world is experiencing a massive labor shortage, the impact of which is falling particularly hard on foodservice. It is a time to remain vigilant about food waste. Because when labor is tight, the pain is particularly acute when a kitchen dedicates staff time prepping food that only goes to waste.

The Association of Healthcare Foodservice (AHF) hosted a recent webinar focusing on why sustainability initiatives are so important right now. The webinar panel included Leanpath CEO Andrew Shakman alongside Gina Sadowski, Director for Nutrition, Culinary and Retail at Seattle Children’s Hospital, and Richard Young, Director of Education at the Frontier Energy Foodservice Technology Center. Watch the full webinar here, and check out four key takeaways from the session below.

"By addressing food waste we have an opportunity to address two of the biggest problems facing our people and our planet: climate change and food insecurity." Leanpath Co-Founder and CEO Andrew Shakman on the inspiration behind the B Corp he started, the enormous challenge--and opportunity--of food waste, and the simple change to kitchen culture that allows foodservice organizations to take control of their own food waste. All in 2 minutes.