Roughly approx 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted all over the world in a year. How nice it would be if all this food were distributed among the homeless and employees or done to charity instead of being dumped in landfills. Restaurants are transforming themselves into eco-friendly by causing the least impact on the planet and nature. They are doing this by reducing smoke emissions and reducing waste. If you are thinking about how waste food can have an impact on the environment? Then the answer is that waste food will, after decomposition, produce methane gas that is not good for the environment. By doing eco-friendly initiatives, you can have a positive impact on customers, and also, you can save plenty of money to replace waste food and products.
We gathered some points that can help to reduce food waste of your restaurant:
Predict the Food Order
You should predict the food orders and the amount of food according to your average sales and the number of customers that visit daily. Once you start forecasting your sales, you will not have extra waste. You should also predict the takeaway orders as well to be a step ahead in the market.
Recreate Your Menu
When you have trained the staff and kept records of your sales, you can easily find out the customer’s trends and the quantity of food. You can eliminate your most wasted food items and amend the most consumed items and introduce new menus.
There are many Muslim communities in the UK, especially in Birmingham. You can add a Halal buffet Birmingham menu.
Store Them Properly
You should store your food in a way it is never spoiled or wasted. If it is kept safe, that means it can be used when someone orders it. Sometimes food gets spoiled before even it is ordered by someone.
Reduce the Over-Ordering
People order extra than they need. They just want their table full of a variety of food. People do not have a planned order. They just see the menu and order multiple dishes. This unplanned and over-ordering should be reduced to reduce food waste production. To do so, the order taker can give its suggestion to clients that this much food is more than enough for you people according to his experience. They may hold their extra order by listening to you.
Leftovers
According to a study carried out in 2019, 30% of wasted food comes from leftover food orders taken by restaurants. That indicated that that portion of food was unnecessary. You can reduce the leftovers by packing them and giving them to the client whose order it was. By doing this, your restaurant waste will rescue, and the customer will feel they have not wasted money or the food, and they can have another portion of the same meal at home.
Record the Waste
You should record the quantity of waste daily. Also, the items that are wasted the most. You can then change the quantity and that item in the order according to the wasted. If you keep recording the quantity and wasted items, you can trace out what is going on in your operations and what’s happening wrong.
Train the Staff
You should also train your staff about the quantity of the food. How much food is enough for how many people, and how to minimize waste production? They can understand how much food will be enough for the different age groups of people and how much food is required for a certain number of people. They can guide the customers on their tables while they are over order that food will be wasted; instead, the staff should help them decide the quantity.
Introduce the Discount
I recently visited a restaurant and saw a very interesting message on my table. The restaurant has mentioned that if there is no food left on the table, you will get a 10% discount. That is a great initiative to educate people not to waste food. They will understand that food wastage is a problem.
Give It to Homeless People
Instead of wasting it, you should give it to homeless people. You can find them easily on the streets and around the corner. This will be great, and you will be bringing some good to society by doing so.
