Restaurant management operations involve a lot of things that also include food waste management. A restaurant owner passes through multiple challenges to run a restaurant successfully and that is why the importance of food waste management is often overlooked.

Reducing food waste in restaurants is essential not only for environmental benefits but also for maintaining sustainability.

You might be surprised to know that 17% of all available food for customers is wasted globally. In 2022, a total of 1.05 billion tonnes of food which is equal to one-fifth of all food available for customers went to waste bins.

So if you too want to know how to reduce food waste in restaurants, read this article thoroughly to get some amazing tips and tricks on the same.
Before diving into the main topic, let us first identify different types of food waste.

Types of food waste in restaurant

Food waste in restaurants can be categorized in two ways:

Pre-consumer food waste:

This is the type of waste in which the food stock is wasted before being served at your customers’ tables. Some of the common pre-consumer food waste include burnt or expired food items.

Post-consumer food waste:

Food waste that happens due to excess or unnecessary ordering falls under the category of post-consumer food waste. Customers often order food that they fail to consume in the end so that food gets wasted.

5 ways to reduce food waste in restaurants

Discover the top 5 ways to reduce food waste in restaurants and adopt sustainable restaurant management practices.

1. Focus on inventory management

To reduce food waste in restaurants, you need to maintain an accurate record of the food stock that you already have and what you need. Besides mentioning the name of the items in the list, make sure you add their expiry date. This will help you cut down unnecessary purchases and wastage at the same time.

2. Embrace sustainable practices

Embracing sustainable restaurant practices is crucial to reduce food waste. They not only help you save food but also preserve the environment. Starting from recycling, reducing carbon emissions, managing water wastage to adopting digitization and training staff everything falls under the category sustainable restaurant practices that utlimately help you reduce food waste.

3. Carefully store food

Knowing how to store different types of food items and their right temperature is crucial to save food from getting spoilt. Make sure you keep an eye on the freezer or fridge temperature and check if they are appropriate for the foods that are stored there.

You can keep the food items that have less chances of getting spoilt in the upper portion of your refrigerator. Keep it clean, to stop any bacterial growth which can damage your foods.

4. Train staff in food waste management

Hiring good staff is not enough to run a restaurant successfully. You need to train them for better management that also include food wastage maintenance. Ensure that you train them in the following ways:

• The right way to store food correctly
• Importance of checking expiry dates of food items.
• Ways to reduce food waste.

Different restaurants have different policies and management techniques. That is why training staff as per your restaurant requirements is very important.

5. Offer take-out containers to customers

It is a good idea to offer take out containers to your customers so that they can take the excess amount of food they have ordered to their homes instead of throwing them in the waste bin.

At Lotus, we also take these measures to manage food waste in our restaurant.

Wrapping up

Wasting food is ethically not right as there are many people on earth who sleep empty stomach. As humans, it is our responsibility to reduce the wastage as much as we can. We hope that they above mentioned tricks to reduce food waste in restaurants will help you significantly decrease food waste in your restaurant.

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