Best Ways To Control Restaurant Food Waste

One initiative that many restaurant businesses are taking is to better control their food waste. Here are some ways that you can implement this practice in your business. 

Controlling Your Inventory

One of the best ways to control your food waste is to take a closer look at your inventory and control when your food supply orders go out. For instance, if you're not already using a food inventory software platform, it's helpful to make this switch. The system can automatically keep track of when you're running low on certain food supplies and order them for you. This way, instead of blindly ordering a set number of supplies, you'll be able to customize your orders to only get the items you need right now. 

Being Concise with Ingredients

Another source of food waste happens when one ingredient is underutilized. One of the ways to stop this is to make sure that all of your ingredients are used in multiple dishes. That way, if one dish happens to not sell this week, you can hopefully balance it by using more of that ingredient in other dishes. 

Changing Your Supply Chain

Your supply chain can be a big source of food waste as well. Many restaurants have the tendency to over-order because they get bulk discounts or they have to wait for the shipments to come in. If you diversify your supply chain, you can avoid ordering way too much food. For instance, order the majority of your food from the bulk suppliers, but then find a local, small-batch supplier that you can turn to in case you run out of an ingredient and need it quickly. 

Hiring a Specialist 

While you can make many of these corrections on your own, it's often a good idea to talk with a professional, like New Horizon Foods, who can spend time collecting data and analyzing your food system to make sure the changes are being implemented efficiently. For instance, you can use food management services to set weekly benchmarks for reducing your food waste. A specialist can also create detailed reports to analyze the financial savings of your food waste reduction program. They can help you set up a donation program that can keep excess food out of landfills and in good places like soup kitchens and food banks (this can be a great way to save money on tax write-offs). Hiring a management specialist is also a good idea if you need to educate employees about new waste reduction processes; your contractor can set up a high-quality program to train and monitor employees as they work with new software or procedures. 


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