Foodservice operations are often high-intensity, high-pressure environments. There are quotas to meet, quality to uphold, and regulations to comply with. And typically, food waste to contend with—up to 10% of all food purchased goes to waste in the kitchen in many foodservice operations.
5 food waste questions I always get asked
Posted by Robb White, CEC CCA AAC; Executive Chef & Food Waste Prevention Catalyst on September 6, 2022
Questions. Everyone has them. I have been fortunate enough to work with hundreds of organizations and thousands of chefs and most of them have the same thing in common: they have a food waste problem and they want a solution for it. I get asked A LOT of questions. Most of the questions I get asked are about repurposing - like, “Chef, do you have a recipe for orange peels?” or “What do I do with leftover pizza dough?” Most of these types of questions have to do with chefs looking for recipes or ideas to creatively turn trim waste or overproduced food into a profit-generating menu item. I am always happy to help a fellow chef find a solution.
Outside of being a consultant and a walking recipe database, I do get asked many questions that seem to resurface on a regular basis. Below are the 5 most common questions that come up; let’s see if these solutions can apply to your kitchen.
Topics: LeanPath Experts, Kitchen Culture
3 food waste questions to address expiration issues
Posted by Robb White, CEC CCA AAC; Executive Chef & Food Waste Prevention Catalyst on April 5, 2021
As Leanpath's full time Executive Chef, I've trained and coached hundreds of chefs and managers on preventing food waste in their operations. One of the most persistent issues is also one of the most avoidable: food waste from items expiring in storage. Avoiding this waste takes establishing and following strict processes to ensure everything in storage is used before it can expire. Here are three questions to ask yourself or your team to find out how effective your kitchen is at avoiding expired food waste.
Topics: Kitchen Culture, Food Waste Strategies
Reducing food waste by changing behavior in the kitchen
Posted by Steve Finn, VP of Food Waste Prevention & Sam Smith, Director of Marketing on November 24, 2020
UK-based WRAP, the Waste Resources Action Programme, recently announced a food waste reduction campaign entitled “Wasting food: it’s out of date.” This is a highly visual effort to convey the scale of the food waste challenge through eye-opening facts (ex. the UK discards 20 million slices of bread daily) and the associated deep environmental, social, and financial impacts (ex. over 500,000 acres of land are unnecessarily used to produce the inputs for that wasted bread).
Building on WRAP’s Love Food, Hate Waste work, the idea is to further educate UK citizens on the severity of the food waste challenge and catalyze change at the consumer level, where 70% of the UK’s food waste occurs.
Topics: food waste measurement, Kitchen Culture
50 food waste prevention ideas for Earth Day’s 50th anniversary
Posted by Robb White, CEC CCA AAC; Executive Chef & Food Waste Prevention Catalyst on April 22, 2020
Today isn’t just any Earth Day, it’s the 50th Earth Day. And to celebrate we’ve collected 50 of our top food waste prevention tips for the kitchen, whether the foodservice or home kitchen. It’s cliché, but in kitchens preventing food waste, every day is Earth Day. We’re proud to help kitchens around the world bring the mission of a more sustainable planet to their teams and their work. Enjoy!
Topics: Kitchen Culture, Food Waste Strategies