Food Waste Intelligence

One of the biggest sources of food waste is trim waste from fruits, vegetables and meats. Some trim waste is inevitable. For that, try to repurpose using my guide to repurpose commonly wasted foods. But some trim waste is created because of poor knife skills: a quarter of a bell pepper is left on top, meat comes off when fat is trimmed. Teaching proper knife skills is critical. Find out the chef on your team who is best with knives and have him or her give a tutorial. Short of that, we've collected some great knife skills videos to he...

It can be hard to picture something that isn't there. And that's exactly what food waste prevention creates: food waste that is not there anymore. It's why prevention is such a powerful solution. Other options for dealing with food waste - like diversion to compost or donations - have their place, but they only deal with food waste after it is created, after you've incurred their cost, and after it's had substantial environmental impact. Using Leanpath's food waste data, we've created a visual to help you "see" prevention.

Leanpath works in a lot of kitchens. Over 2,500 in more than 38 countries. Our food waste tracking and analytics help these teams understand where their food waste is coming from and why it’s happening. Once they understand that, I work with a lot of them to then figure out strategies to start preventing the waste from happening.

We’ve all been to a catered event, whether it was a buffet or a plated meal, a business luncheon or a wedding reception, a breakfast line brimming with scrambled eggs and bacon or a break table piled high with pastries. But I’ll bet you’ve never been to a catered event that ran out of food. Overproduction is a given for most caterers, because if they run out of food, there’s not a kitchen in the back to prep anything more. This type of food waste is the inconvenient truth of running and organizing a catering event. All the chefs, plan...

I often get asked, “Chef, how can I motivate my staff to track their food waste?” It’s a good question, and one that comes up often. My simple answer usually is “You can’t.” I am a firm believer that you can’t motivate, but you can inspire. Motivation vs. Inspiration is a well documented topic and one that often leads me back to heated debates I used to get into when I served as the Dean of Culinary. Culinary leaders and chefs often fail to understand a simple fact of human nature: people are intrinsically motivated beings. My student...