Food Waste Intelligence

Food waste prevention–the only way to address food waste that delivers triple-bottom-line benefits–requires new kitchen tools and workflows. For busy kitchens with thin margins, this rightly brings up questions – and can lead to misconceptions. 

One of the biggest myths about food waste prevention is that it takes too long. In fact, food waste tracking and the prevention it enables not only saves money, it saves time, making kitchen teams more efficient. 

Let’s dig a little deeper into this myth and get a better idea of the actual ROI on food waste tracking.

I’m Ben Murphy and I have recently joined Leanpath as a Customer Success manager and Food Waste Prevention Chef. (That's me on the left with Leanpath Executive Chef Robb White.) Having worked in various types of kitchens over a 14-year period, I have battled face on with the issue of food waste from weekend brunch to corporate catering to fine dining. I completed a Masters in Environmental Science with a focus on food sustainability in order to better understand the interconnected and multifaceted connection between mass food production and our environment. 

I am delighted to have joined Leanpath in its mission to make food waste prevention everyday practice in the world’s kitchens. I will be working closely with clients globally to help them take action against food waste by way of the data they are able to discover through tracking food waste with Leanpath. 

I have been on the road for the last three weeks visiting client kitchens, engaging with chefs, managers and leadership on the challenges they face in curtailing food waste and seeing first hand the innovative and effective methods and best practices culinary teams have put in place to repurpose food that would have otherwise gone to waste. Some of the most impressive food waste repurposing actions I encountered were:

Your kitchen is nearing the end of a busy service and it’s been a long day. Your culinary team is short staffed. Everybody is drained and looking forward to heading home. But there’s still food to be served, and breakdown and clean up still have to be done. 

There are many food waste critical control points within a kitchen: the end of service is one of the most important. What happens in this short span of time, when staff are often distracted, can have a large impact–positively or negatively–on your food waste prevention efforts. 

The key to avoiding this excess waste is to have a plan for the end of service and communicate it to the culinary team. Here are the key elements of a waste-aware end-of-service plan.

When COVID-19 took hold in 2020, one of the first dramatic changes in foodservice was the disappearance of buffets and salad bars. As the industry (and the world) continues to return to something more like a pre-pandemic normal, self-serve operations continue to come back online. Las Vegas, one of the buffet capitals of the world, continues its dining return; Disney Parks continues reopening buffet service; and one of the U.S.’s leading college trend setters, Penn State, just reintroduced self service.  

While this is positive news for the industry, the return of buffets and salad bars brings with it the probability of increased food waste, particularly as staff reacquaint themselves with these service styles.

Here are some best practices to avoid food waste as you bring buffets and salad bars back:

The world is experiencing a massive labor shortage, the impact of which is falling particularly hard on foodservice. Chefs and managers are being forced to introduce new processes and procedures that allow the day-to-day functions of the kitchen to continue, but with much less labor than they had before. When chefs and managers choose a labor-saving tactic to fix one aspect of the operation, there may be pitfalls or unintended consequences, like an increase in food waste.