Best Ways to Reduce Food Waste in Your Restaurant

Food waste is an unfortunate reality for all restaurants. In total, food waste costs restaurants $162 billion in total per year due to product spoilage, miscalculated portions and orders, food spillage, and refires.

Luckily, you can use certain tactics to minimize restaurant waste, saving your business money and reducing your environmental impact.

The Benefits of Reducing Food Waste

Reducing food waste in your restaurant offers the following benefits:

• Improves revenue: The average restaurant wastes 4% to 10% of purchased food, equating to $1,000 in revenue per 3.3 pounds. Food waste reduction helps your restaurant improve revenue by saving money.
• Reduces local hunger: Over-purchasing has rebounding effects on the supply chain, creating high demand, low supply, and high prices for certain products. High levels of restaurant food waste can make local products more inaccessible to those in need. Donating leftover food to charity can reduce hunger in your local community. 
• Lessens your environmental impact: The farming and manufacturing processes required to produce food can harm the environment. Minimizing your food waste improves your restaurant’s environmental impact. 
• Attracts more customers: When you reduce food waste and improve your revenue, you can lower prices, which can help you attract more customers. 

How to Start Reducing Food Waste Now

Food waste reduction requires careful management tactics. Begin with waste audits to determine your current rate, so you can locate problem areas. 

For example, you may notice that 56% of your wasted food comes from spoilage, 13% comes from customers sending food back (refires), and 23% comes from over-servings with food left on the table. Once you understand your problem areas, use these food waste reduction tips below.

Avoid Over-buying

Knowing how much food to order for your restaurant isn’t easy, but you can refine it based on data. View past ordering trends with spoilage figures to locate which items you typically don’t use by the end of the day or week. 

Over-buying also includes over-preparing. Certain products, like frozen foods or sealed cans, will spoil quickly once thawed, opened, and prepared. Your staff should only prepare the required food per day to limit spoilage.

Store Food Correctly

Storage directly impacts how long food lasts. While it may seem obvious to refrigerate certain foods, you can make ingredients last longer by using more detailed storage tactics. 

For example, storing carrots in water to maintain moisture can help the veggie last longer. You can freeze certain products to elongate shelf lives and research the best storage methods for the rest. 

Label Food Correctly

Often, food spoils when your staff forgets it’s there. You may order a pound of dry lentils, unaware that you already have three pounds in the back of the pantry collecting dust. 

Clear, noticeable labels help your staff find the items they need, which prevents you from ordering in excess. 

Watch Portion Control

Customers typically leave 17% of their food on the table, with only about half of diners bringing leftovers home. Post-production waste directly relates to portion control.

Review your waste audit to determine how much your portion control relates to wasted food. If you’re throwing out uneaten food from diners’ plates, reduce your portions. 

Multi-use Menu Items

Serving a dozen veggies across your entrees creates unnecessary ordering complexity and excessive spoilage. You cannot always predict which meals people will order, which means certain ingredients will go to waste. Try using a set of core ingredients across dishes to streamline the process. 

Donate Leftovers to Charity

Your restaurant will still generate waste, even when using the tactics above. However, unused food doesn’t have to go in the trash. Donate it to charity or send it home with your staff. 

Streamline Your Waste Disposal

Understanding how to reduce your restaurant waste isn’t easy. Conducting a waste audit, locating problem areas, and determining an improvement plan requires careful data analysis. 

As one of the top waste disposal services in Houston, we go beyond dumpster services by helping our clients discover sustainability and efficiency opportunities. Our comprehensive waste management service includes tailored waste removal solutions, disposal equipment and pickups, permanent compactor solutions, and more. Whether you need a basic waste disposal solution or a customized recycling plan, we can help.

When you’re ready to streamline your restaurant waste disposal, our team at Houston Waste Services will analyze your business to create a plan for your needs. Contact Houston Waste Services in Houston, TX, today at (281) 817-1106 to request a quote from our experienced team.