“There are plenty of ways for restaurant workers, cooks, chefs and owners to reduce the amount of waste that occurs within their establishments, and the truth is, most chefs strive to keep food waste at manageable levels. The main reason for this is because food waste affects food cost, which is the largest, most easily controllable expense which affects the profitability of any restaurant. Another reason that chefs work at keeping food waste to a minimum, is because, as a group, they tend to be among the most frugal people I have ever met. They hate to waste food. It is nearly a physical affront to many chefs to edible food thrown away.”

I like how you explained that. Very helpful. Thanks.

Usually the food is still perfectly good, and it’s tempting for the employees to take it home, but it’s considered stealing if they did that without paying for it, but it can’t be sold if it’s past its date.

When my mom was the manager of a Boston Market she used to let her employees take the food home anyway, and also took it home for me and my sister to eat, but that’s because the was the manager and could get away with it as long as none of her employees turned her in to the higher ups (and of course they wouldn’t do that when they were taking home whole chickens and big bags of vegetables for free).

When I worked at a Barnes and Noble, the Starbucks cafe would throw away an entire garbage bag full of muffins, cookies, and pastries every night! It was explained to me that they had to have a certain amount of product out in the display case at all time to look pretty, and if it wasn’t sold at the end of the day, it had to be thrown away (I suspect Boston Market had a similar policy since those stores have their food out cafeteria-style and the chickens turning on a spit behind the counter for the customers to see). I got in trouble there once for being caught on the security camera rescuing/stealing some cookies after we had closed and they were destined for the garbage. Nothing serious, I was just told never to do that again.

I guess the policy is there because if you let your employees start taking expired food home it starts to get hard to tell if they’re sneaking out some sellable food too, but still it seems like a huge waste to me, and I supsect all fast food and restaurant chains are like this.

1. Scrape your buckets! Absolutely nothing is ever left sitting at the bottom of a bucket or jar. That’s my biggest pet peeve when I am training apprentices at work: scrape, scrape, scrape!

2. Meticulously label and date everything that is in your fridge, freezer, and pantry, and rotate your stock (FIFO–first in, first out). If you know what you’ve got going on in your kitchen, you’ll be more likely to use food before it goes to waste.

3. Keep an organized list of staples that you keep in your fridge and dry pantry. Figure out a par level (what you need on hand) for your family on a weekly basis. Before grocery shopping, take inventory. This will keep you from buying another jar of peanut butter when you’ve already got two in your pantry. This is an indespensible tool that restaurants use to control food cost.

I do inventory twice a week on everything that is in my dry goods, walk-in coolers and my walk-in freezer. Inventory is always done before I place a food delivery order (which is also twice a week). My inventory lists are organized by area, which are broken down into sections according to how I organize stock (makes it easy and efficient to count and place an order).

I establish par levels of each item (what I need to get me until my next delivery), and these I keep track of throughout the year and adjust as needed. I only order enough to keep me at the par level, this keeps me from ordering (and buying) too much, which negatively affects my food cost and keeps me from having to throw away food.

There are many other practices that we use in the industry, but for me, these are the top three.