Reduce | Source reduction

Menu planning

Redesign your menus and meal planning to reduce the amount of food you waste. 

Compare the number of meals prepared and served to the number of uneaten meals. You can use production sheets and tracking software to calculate this number. 

Review which foods and food products are expired or thrown out on a regular basis. This will give you a better understanding of which purchased items are never used. Then you can change your ordering or preparation practices accordingly. 

Conduct a plate waste study to identify the food items most commonly thrown away. This can inform whether the portion size should be reduced, the recipe should be adjusted, or the item should be eliminated from the menu.

Buy locally and seasonally. Locally produced items are often harvested days or even hours before you receive them. Local, seasonal items stay fresher for longer and taste better.

Avoid purchasing unique or special ingredients that are used seldomly or for only one dish. These items can be more likely to spoil.

Food purchasing/procurement

Buy only what you need. Leanpath, a business that helps customers reduce food waste and improve efficiency, found its customers have typically reduced their pre-consumer food waste by 50% or more, resulting in a 2%-6% savings on annual food purchases. Your food distribution partners may have software that can help you forecast your needs so you do not over or under order. Ask your representative what they offer to help you purchase efficiently. 

Order smaller quantities of foods that spoil most often. Your baseline assessment and tracking will help you identify these items.

Food storage and inventory

Ensure food is properly handled and stored to prevent damage and spoiling. Incorporate first-in, first-out storage and rotation systems for dry stock, deli, produce, seafood, dairy, and baked goods. Conduct “cooler tours” daily to ensure food is utilized, and come up with creative ideas for using up the surplus.

Preparation 

Minimize waste by utilizing as much of the product as possible. Employ root-to-stem cooking (using the entire vegetable) and nose-to-tail cooking (using the entire animal). Make healthy, delicious stocks and soups to reduce food scraps.

Special events and catered meals

Plan special events and catering to prevent food waste. Require frequently updated headcounts prior to the event to avoid overproduction. Consider eliminating special catering menus and instead offer what is already being prepared for retail areas. 

Repurposing prepared foods

Weekend and night staff often have fewer options for food, and many rely on vending machine snacks for nourishment. If properly cooled and stored, overproduced food items can be made into meals for staff working during off hours. Additionally, feeding kitchen staff, a common practice in restaurants often called “family meal,” can be a way to utilize prepared foods and foods in storage before they expire.
 

Mayo Clinic

“Mayo Clinic has focused on the top portion of the EPA’s food waste reduction pyramid – source reduction and feeding hungry people. One of the techniques we’re utilizing for source reduction is root-to-stem. This technique is helpful in ensuring that we are utilizing all useful parts of the plant.”

– Amanda Holloway, Mayo Clinic director of sustainability
 

UC San Diego Health

“We started initially with plate waste. We revamped our menus and style of service almost entirely based on plate waste studies. From there, we are looking at not just the amount of leftover waste but the expense associated with it. We are really looking at proteins, especially because we buy antibiotic-free, grass fed proteins. If we are wasting those, it is costing us even more! [We have a] big focus on proteins, and from there looking at what is selling and what is not, and then adjusting our production sheets.”

– Jill Martin, UC San Diego director of food and nutrition services

This toolkit offers back-of-house guidance on meal planning, food storage, and culinary techniques to reduce food waste.

Waste-reducing menus and ingredient waste potential analysis from Hotel Kitchen

Portion sizes are often larger than an average consumer can finish in one meal, which can lead to significant plate waste. Changing the portion sizes of menu items and training staff on serving those portions can help reduce this waste. 

At self-service stations, encourage customers to take only what they will eat with messaging about your food waste reduction efforts.

Trayless dining and smaller plates help shift consumer behavior to pick up fewer items at once, encouraging them to eat first, then go back for seconds if needed.

This toolkit from Hotel Kitchen offers waste reduction strategies for self-service stations, which are particularly useful for catered meetings and events.

This resource from ReFED offers more information on strategies to reduce waste like portion sizes and trayless dining.

Keep track of all the strategies you implemented and how you implemented them. Note which strategies were effective and why. Consider the following questions to explore with your staff:

• Is the flow of procedures for tracking and diverting food waste easy and straightforward, or does it cause confusion?
• Do kitchen staff feel supported and empowered to reduce waste, or is there a culture of fear of doing things the "wrong" way? What activities or strategies would create a more supportive environment?
• Do staff feel they have enough bandwidth to tackle food waste, or are they stretched and strained with their current workload?

Measuring the absence of something can be a challenge. How do you measure waste that was never created? To evaluate the effectiveness of source reduction strategies you may want to perform visual checks of garbage bins on a regular basis. If it appears that food continues to be placed in garbage bins, check in with staff to ensure they understand protocols. Another tracking method could be maintaining waste logs for whenever food is thrown away from coolers or due to overproduction (the two primary sources of back-of-the-house waste). Collect these data points on a regular schedule to measure your quantitative impact. If you are just getting started, we suggest you track them daily or as frequently as possible.  

• Pounds of food waste due to overproduction
• Pounds of food waste due to spoilage