Save Money and Cut Food Waste in Your Restaurant

Did you know that more than 1 billion tons of food is wasted every year and that restaurants throw away almost 40% of this huge amount? This means that every day restaurants around the world throw away so much food that this issue cannot be ignored any longer.

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If you are willing to invest a bit of effort to cut food waste in your restaurant, you will receive several benefits. One of them is definitely saving money. Not only will you learn how to invest enough money to buy the necessary ingredients without buying too much food, you will also save a significant amount of money in other operating costs.

Another benefit is that your restaurant can earn even more money once you invest in reducing food waste. This is done simply by repurposing the leftovers and creating new and exciting meals as specials. Your customers will love it for sure, which will allow you to earn even more.

So if you are ready to cut food waste in your restaurant, take a look at how you can do it as efficiently as possible.

Track your food waste

The first step is to record and track your food waste at the moment. Just note it down for a few days to understand how much food gets thrown away every day. This will show you what kind of food ends up in the garbage every day and what kind of food is never thrown away. Not only will you get a clear idea of how much food you waste, but you will also see which dishes are the popular ones and which ones are perhaps redundant. So track food usage and waste for a few days to really understand how much money you are wasting as well.

Predict food orders

Even if this sounds rather as something that is not that easy, in time you will be able to predict the exact amount of food you need to order. And you will be able to do that by comparing the current food orders with food waste you already keep track of. Once you write down all the numbers, it will become much easier to predict how much food you need. Just don’t push yourself to get it right straight away, this will definitely take some practice.

Practice expiry dates control

A lot of food gets thrown out because no one paid attention to the expiry dates. For example, if you buy milk every day, it may happen that the new packages are used while the ones from the day before aren’t because they are moved to the back of the shelves. And since no one paid attention to this, these packages of milk will go off and you will have to throw them away.

The easiest way to solve this problem is to simply have someone check expiry dates every day, so that any product that is about to become spoiled is used before that. They can make sure that these products are used immediately and therefore they will prevent the unnecessary food waste.

Use the excess food

The easiest way to use the excess food and leftovers is to create fun specials of the day! This way you will kill two birds with one stone! Not only will your customers have the chance to enjoy in different meals that are not on the menu, but you will also use as much as food as you can without throwing it away!

Donate

The last tip on how to cut food waste in your restaurant is to donate it to those in need. You can opt to donate food to a huge number of charities that will certainly appreciate your help or you can even give it to your employees. To whom you will donate is completely up to you, so find out more about your local charities and make the necessary arrangements with them.

If you are willing to cut food waste, there are a number of things you can do, from donating it to using the excess food to create specials. No matter what you decide, just make sure you have a quality POS system that will allow you to track down everything properly. So if you need any help with setting different POS integrations, Orders2Me experts are here to help.