According to recent studies, restaurants generate as much as 33 billion pounds of food waste per year, leading to a loss of a whopping $12 million per year. This can be a big issue considering that over 50 million Americans experienced food insecurity during the pandemic.

Thankfully, all hope isn’t lost. With a better understanding of how to prevent food waste in restaurants, these establishments can play a part in food insecurity.

This article will cover tips that could help food service establishments in reducing food waste.

Conduct a Waste Audit

Without a waste audit, there’s no way to discover or know the amount of food waste you produce per time. Try to reduce the waste produced by sorting the leftovers and separating them from each other.

Additionally, you can create a database to record and journal all the waste you’ve produced per day. Include several cases such as expired or rotten food, broken substances, etc. Doing so gives you an idea of how much waste you produce and how to curb it.

Store Food Properly

Ensure that all food items are stored at the proper temperature. Monitor all refrigerators as deep freezers to ensure they work at optimal temperatures. Your refrigerator temperature should never be above 40°F. You should also never allow meals that require constant refrigeration to be at room temperature to prevent spoilage.

Store ready-to-eat and raw proteins on different shelves to prevent cross-contamination. For perishable foods, label them with the date purchased and expiry date. Be diligent about all these laid down rules and create a contingency plan for what to do if things don’t go as planned.

Identify Multi-Menu Items

Another important way to reduce waste is to find certain ingredients that can be used in several other dishes. This will help you take advantage of buying some items in bulk while ensuring that they don’t go to waste due to infrequent usage.

You can also turn leftover meals into new specials. For example, use bones of chicken or meat and vegetable leftovers to make stocks and broths. Leftover bread is ideal for bread crumbs or croutons. Turn meat remains into a stew or chili and roasted chicken remnants into a pot pie or soup.

Spur your chefs to be creative in transforming yesterday’s leftovers or excess ingredients into the next day’s specials. The more you use, the less you’ll waste.

This can also go beyond meals and ingredients. Managers can try to reuse any product that they can. For example, a laminated menu can be used instead of a paper one, or the paper one can be laminated to be reused.

Inspect All Food Deliveries

Sometimes food vendors can try to be crafty and attempt to put out rotting or expired ingredients beneath deliveries. Carefully scrutinize every delivery product before receiving it, or you might have no choice but to throw some away.

And if there’s a consistent record of receiving subpar products from certain vendors, it might be time to change them and find more qualified dealers. Use appropriate tech tools to appraise suppliers and to ensure that they consistently churn out quality food supplies and produce.

On the other hand, vendors can utilize software solutions to facilitate the smooth movement of the food products to the restaurant as quickly as possible. This is a good way to combat spoilage and decrease food waste.

Turn Organic Waste into Manure

While food waste can sometimes be inevitable, it can be transmitted to something else. You make food waste beneficial to the environment by turning them into compost.

Also, some products that you think are waste are perfectly edible. You can donate good but unused food to orphanage homes and food banks, reducing waste and helping with the food insecurity in your community.

Many of the scraps at your food establishment can be composted, turned into fertilizers, or burnt to generate methane, giving off fuel.

Train Your Staff

Regardless of how knowledgeable you are at waste management, you will never be fully successful until you bring your staff on board. Educate your staff on the reason for waste management. Make sure they are as passionate about the cause as you are.

Show them ingenious ways and techniques to make food fresher or stay for a long time. Encourage them to be able to whip up entirely new specials from leftovers.

Also, endeavor to integrate it into the culture of the company. That way, every new hire is intimated about the laid down rules and standards regarding waste management.

Conclusion

Reducing food waste may sound like a task, but it’s easier than you think. You only have to adopt the above mentioned strategies to reduce food waste, save costs, and sustain the planet. Making these small changes will add up over time, protect our environment and boost our planet’s longevity.

The post 6 Smart Ways to Reduce Food Waste in Your Restaurant appeared first on Branch ES Catering.

Restaurant owners and chefs may get the glory, but they’re not necessarily the ones running the show. In many cases, they hire a restaurant manager for the day-to-day operations.

For owners who don’t have deep restaurant or management experience, hiring a manager who does can ensure that the business is run the way it should be run. It also frees the owner or chef from daily administrative tasks such as inventory, so they can focus on growing and marketing the business. Trusting the restaurant manager to do their job can lead to a restaurant running like a well-oiled machine.

Restaurant Manager Duties and Responsibilities

So what does a restaurant manager do? According to EHL Insights, they oversee all the operations of the restaurant, from the kitchen to the dining room. That requires juggling multiple tasks each day and requires strong organizational skills and interpersonal communication.

“In effect, a restaurant manager embodies general management, administration, customer services, human resources, supply chain & procurement, health and safety, compliance, accounting & marketing — all rolled into one,” EHL writes.

It’s a combination of hard skills, ranging from understanding restaurant software to knowing how to do accounting, and soft skills, the intangible qualities that lead to great management and customer service.

Hard skills for restaurant managers include the following, according to Small Business Chron:

• Controlling the supply chain. “Running out of ingredients is frustrating for cooks and diners alike and can damage a restaurant’s reputation. On the other hand, stocking too much inventory ties up needed capital and can lead to waste. Orchestrating deliveries from multiple suppliers to maintain a suitable level of inventory is fundamental to a restaurant’s success.”
• Managing the business. “These include the nuts and bolts of business management, such as accounting, budgeting, ensuring compliance with municipal regulations, and many similar functions. Profit margins are thin throughout the restaurant industry, and paying close attention to the bottom line can make the difference between success and failure.”

Many employers prefer that restaurant managers have a bachelor’s degree in hospitality or training from a community college, notes Glassdoor. They must at least have a high school diploma or equivalent, as well as experience working in the food and beverage service industry. “Additionally, many restaurant managers are required to have their food handler certification card, which is obtained by taking a short course or program that covers food safety,” says Glassdoor.

Soft skills for restaurant managers include communication, problem-solving and conflict management, a positive attitude, attention to detail, multitasking, team spirit, language skills, cultural awareness, and taking criticism well, according to EHL Insights.

Tip 1: Learn the fact-based information you need to do your job, such as accounting and food safety, but remember to cultivate your listening and communication skills, as well.

What Are the Qualities That a Restaurant Manager Needs to Be Successful?

A good restaurant manager should be on top of everything, throughout the restaurant. That includes recipe costing, employee training, negotiating with suppliers, and much more. You should be aware of and up-to-date with everything that goes on. That doesn’t mean you need to micromanage your staff, but do strive to understand everyone’s role. That way, it’s much easier when you need to replace staff or deal with shortages.

For example, in the restaurant business, turnover rates can be more than 80%. That means you’ll be spending a lot of time posting job ads, interviewing, and hiring. This kind of work is unavoidable to an extent because some people tend to view restaurant work as temporary, but turnover can add to a restaurant’s costs.

Still, there are things you can do to reduce turnover — and that’s where the soft skills come in. Focus on making your staff feel valued and respected. Get to know them on an individual level, listen to their complaints and struggles, and help solve their problems.

EHL Insights lists the top five qualities restaurant managers need:

• You should be a host through and through and enjoy dealing with people
• You should show the ability to balance quality on the plate with financial constraints
• You need an eye for detail, the beauty and modernity
• You should be a communication talent
• Bring a professional, human and warm leadership personality to the table

Note that these are nearly all soft skills.

Tip 2: Your employees will determine your success. Hire good ones and treat them well — not just pay, but that too — to reduce turnover costs.

Challenges Restaurant Managers Face

Along the way, the restaurant manager can run into problems. These can include the following, according to RestaurantEngine.com:

• Employee turnover: “A continual movement of staff in and out of your restaurant, whether it’s front or back of house, can cause your managers a lot of issues.”
• Employee training: “Training staff can be quite challenging due to a constant influx of new team members and a busy restaurant. It can be hard to set aside time just for training.”
• Unpredictability: “If you have too many staff working a shift, your operating costs go up unnecessarily. If you have too few staff members working, you can’t possibly meet the needs of your diners.”
• Customer experience: “Bad online reviews are often the result of really bad customer service.”
• Inventory management: This includes not only ingredients for the restaurant itself but employee theft

Tip 3: All restaurants run into problems. What matters is how you deal with them.

How Can Software Help Restaurant Managers Do Their Jobs?

It’s easy to rely on spreadsheets and paper when it comes to inventory and scheduling. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Actually, tech can make things a whole lot easier here. Inventory management software means you can automate much of your inventory. 

For example, you can arrange for numbers to be subtracted automatically when orders are placed and set automatic reordering for when stock levels dip. Similarly, scheduling software can also be a big help when managing shifts and time off, sending employees their shift times via email or text.

Tip 4: Keep up with trends in restaurant operations software to look for ways to automate whatever aspects of the job you can, to save time and money.

All in all, being a restaurant manager isn’t easy. According to Small Business Chron, “Restaurant managers work extremely long hours, sometimes as many as 12 to 15 hours per day, up to seven days per week. During the course of a given day, managers may deal with upset customers, fill in for staff, train staff members and place orders for food and other supplies. The long hours combined with the multiple responsibilities often lead to stress and exhaustion among restaurant managers.” But following these tips can make this critical job easier.

The post Want to Be a Restaurant Manager? appeared first on Branch ES Catering.