7 Ways To Reduce Waste In Your Restaurant

Running a food service restaurant requires a lot of thinking. You have to order your ingredients on time, staff, and financial management. However, it is equally essential for you to consider what happens to food that is left uneaten. Therefore, to ensure sustainable operation of your restaurant, we have shortlisted seven tips to reduce restaurant waste.

Reduce the size of the food portion

Just in case you realize that the majority of your customers are regularly leaving leftovers when they have finished their meals, you need to consider reducing the size of the food portion you serve them. Perhaps it is too many for them to finish. Also, you need to track the popularity of each dish. If you realize that specific meals are unpopular, you can readjust your recipe or remove it from the menu.

Recycle any product you can

Recycling is one of the simplest ways of dealing with plastics, and glass. Recycling can be achieved by providing customers with napkins dispensers that can be washed and reused. The same goes for table cloths. Also, you can collect all the food waste scraps into compost. This can either be given to farmers to feed their pigs or be used in a landfill. 

Educate your employees

You need to educate your employees and make them aware of the importance of food preservation. Also, they need to know about the benefits of preventing food wastage and the impact it can bring to the business. For example, the money that would otherwise go into wastage could as well be put into alternative use such as organizing for a staff retreat. For this purpose, you better start with yourself. The best way to do it is by reaching out to professionals. For more info on where to find them, just do a quick Google search.

Donate surplus food

In any case, you find too much food left, you can decide to donate them to charity to help in alleviating hunger among the needy. Instead of dropping the food waste, you can contact companies such as Food Forward SA, which helps distribute it to the less fortunate. Besides, there are more and more charity organizations seeking food donations from restaurants countrywide. Therefore, you can impact positively into someone else life through food donation. 

Proper storage

Sometimes it can be stressful enough that the refrigerators and freezers often need to be at an appropriate temperature for food to remain safe. If for instance, power goes off, all the stored food is likely to go bad or unfit for human consumption. In this case, you need to equip yourself with a power back up plan such as a generator to maintain the refrigerators running in case of an outrage. 

Give uneaten leftovers to employees

You can also provide your employees with food leftovers so that they can take them away home. Some charity organizations follow guidelines and may decide not to accept your food donations due to several reasons. In such cases, you can request your employees to take the food home for dinner. 

Stop buying excess produce

If you find that your fresh food goes bad or out of date before you use them, you need to reconsider the amount of your purchase. Buy only what you need. Do not overbuy produce that will go bad in the long run.

Conclusively, it is always important to conserve food and prevent excessive wastage. The above seven points will therefore assist you in reducing your restaurant wastage.