Food Waste Intelligence

As the situation around COVID-19 continues to evolve, many foodservice operations around the globe are experiencing impacts.  With a focus on health and safety, operations are temporarily closing, adjusting hours to limited service, or changing service styles to remove self-service or buffets - anything to mitigate the chance of spreading the virus. Foodservice teams may be notified with short notice of these changes in an effort to further protect our communities.  

The impact of COVID-19 on the foodservice and hospitality industry is hitting fast and, at least for now, hard. During any time of uncertainty, it’s important to focus on what you can actually control. There are ways kitchens can increase efficiency during slow times--or anytime for that matter--and take greater control of the impact of that slow down on their bottom line. 

Salad bars are vital in high-volume operations. The salad bar concept allows the kitchen to feed a lot of guests with the least amount of labor cost. It gives guests the ability to customize their meals. It offers chefs a way to utilize and repurpose ingredients in a creative and efficient manner. There are many positives to salad bars, but standard displays and operating procedures can also lead to massive amounts of food waste.

In order to meet the UN goal of reducing food waste by 50% by 2030 we need to accelerate adoption of food waste measurement and behavior change around the world. That means understanding the fears and concerns of companies that have the largest potential impact and responding to them with expertise. The Food Loss & Waste Protocol released a conversational whitepaper identifying top objections to measuring food waste with recommendations on how to move the conversation forward. Here is a summary of the top objections to measuring food waste and strategies to overcome them - for a deeper read including case studies, check out the full FLW Protocol publication here.