Alternate Uses of Over Supply

Many restaurants use their specials board to move over stocked protein items. The protein could be raw or previously cooked. Generally, a menu item is developed to utilize the over stock. For example, leftover roast may be diced and added to chili or soup. Fresh fish may be offered as the "Catch of the Day" and featured at an attractive price.

Many urban areas have charity organizations with the goal of reducing hunger among the homeless. They usually have trucks and will send a driver to pick up any donations. Some restaurants donate over stocked protein items which tend to lose flavor when frozen.

Certainly, many over stocked fresh items find their way to the freezers. Both raw and cooked items are frequently frozen. Some food loses flavor and texture when frozen and thawed. You may consider purchasing items in a frozen state. Commercial flash freezing retains more of the qualities.

My favorite uses of over supply is the stock pot in cold months and salads in warm months. We are now in summer. One of my clients serves a wonderful salad Nicoise using cold seared tuna. In addition to stocks and salads, you may be able to marinate some meats. Kabobs and BBQ often require several days in a marinade.

Photo from Simply Recipes.

Once your over supply of food spoils, the obvious destination is the nearest garbage bin. If the wasted food is disposed of in a heavy plastic garbage bag, it may eventually produce methane which is harmful to the environment. Compost piles may be an option if you are in the country. Some urban garden groups may be interested in your waste. Some fats and oils can be converted into a fuel which can be used in diesel engines.

Accurate forecasts help reduce the management energy spent trying to make the most of over stocked items. In a perfect world, there would be very little left over each night. Improved forecasts will reduce waste.

Macroeconomics of Food Waste

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)tracks food waste in the United States. They list food waste as the "single-largest component of the waste stream by weight" in the country. Americans waste 25% of the food we prepare each year.

This waste amounts to 96 billion pounds annually.

Click the photo below to be directed to their website:


Restaurants are included in the statistics. You can lower your food cost and the costs to dispose of waste (both sewage and garbage removal costs) and help the environment.

Food donations, offering urban gardening groups waste for compost and recycling fry oil for diesel are some of the solutions we read about currently.

The New York Times, October 9, 2008, article "Farmer in Chief" has two amazing facts:

After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent.

A bushel of grain takes approximately a half gallon of oil to produce; grass can be grown with little more than sunshine.

Combining these facts, we could cut the use of oil used to grow food which will eventually be wasted if we never order the excess food in the first place.

Exposing Hidden Food Waste

There are plenty of issues in every operation which could be corrected if only management was aware of their existence. Many operators avoid the effort required to create a detailed operations manual. Given the turnover level in our industry, this document should be mandatory. Imagine working as a line cook or expediter without any point of reference. You are hired and receive very little direction.

Immediately, you start work using your prior experience to guide you in your new position. Maybe you never cut steaks at your previous jobs since portion control cuts were used. Orders come in for strip steaks and you are told the meat is in a walkin cooler and the policy is to cut steaks from the boneless strip loin. Properly cutting steaks is not your forte. Instead of 11 steaks per strip, your efforts yield only 10 steaks. In a steak house this would be unlikely but possible. In a casual dining operation with a large menu, this is common.

Lack of training and standard portion control costs this operation 10% extra on each steak served.

Produce preparation is subject to tremendous yield swings. Even the industry sources disagree on produce yields. Whenever you prepare anything other than the entire piece of fruit or vegetable (e.g. head of lettuce or an apple), you have an impact on yield. On slow nights and in many low volume operations, produce prep takes place on an inpromptu basis. With no specific person or team tasked with produce prep, the exercise produces wide swings in yield.



French fries seem like a straight forward item to properly portion. One of my clients called me excited one day to retell a success story with our recently built usage variance model. The system uncovered a 30% overuse of fries. The issue involved poor training of a new hire. This cook would fry an entire bag of fries. He portioned the fries perfectly on each plate after the expediter showed him how the fries should look on the plate.

Early and late in the meal periods, his cooked fries would be routinely swept into the nearby garbage pail once they were cold. A quick training session fixed the issue. He was taught how to portion the fries before cooking during slower times.

[An anonymous reader left a comment on the Food Cost Basics post which pertains to waste.]

After 20 years of running Full Service Restaurants. Food cost can be attacked by two basic angles. 60% of all food cost is in the garbage can (waste). The rest is over portioned. Focusing your coaching and training on these two key areas will typically keep your food cost in check. However, in some types of restaurants, such as Steak houses, you have to focus on your budgeted number and it will be much higher, but keep in mind RTN or return to net. If you sell a 24 oz cowboy Ribeye for $20.00 and it cost you $10. You have a 50% food cost, but your making $10 on each one sold. For a comparison, take chicken wings, you might sell them for $10 and have a cost of $3. You have a 30% cost, but your making $3 less than the 50% cost, Ribeye. Food for thought.

Why Did This Week Suck?

In the movie "A Few Good Men", Tom Cruise's character Danny shouts out "I want the truth!" and Jack Nicholson's character Colonel Jessup shouts back "You can't handle the truth!" just before the Colonel offers the entire truth. While sitting in on management meetings at some of my client's offices, I'm tempted to mimic Danny and ask for the truth.

The truth gets swept into the closet at too many of these meetings.

With regard to food cost results, I have seen some major screw ups over the years. Here's the top 2:

1. Manager ordered his staff to cook 200 whole rotisserie chickens (typical demand is 40 per night) since he felt they might spoil. He offered the birds at a $1 discount.

Instead of freezing the raw birds, the staff followed orders and prepped 5 times the usual marinade, prepped the chickens and slow cooked them all day long on the rotisserie. They sold an extra 10 chickens. The additional unit sales weren't enough to offset the discount of $50. What did they do with the other 150 birds?

They never did sell well the next day when they were offered cold for $2 off. More ingredients were wasted when the staff whipped up a mess of chicken salad. Try to imagine the additional labor, the marinade ingredients, the gas used to cook the chickens, the mayo and veggies used in the salad.

Instead of stopping the insanity early and eating the $250 on day one, the mistake was allowed to dominate the week. The manager never survived this debacle.

2. A fast moving multi-tasker put 10 cases of baby back ribs over medium heat and went outside to check on a delivery. Since the restaurant was not open for breakfast, no one was in the kitchen for the next hour. The delivery didn't go as planned and several phone calls were required to communicate with the vendor's main office.

By the time the employee made it back to the kitchen, he realized his mistake. The ribs were all ruined (burned on the one side). The owner came in 2 hours later and asked why the kitchen smelled like something was on fire. He was told how the 300 pounds of ribs were burned and discarded.

This was an honest mistake. The ribs were immediately discarded and the employee never wasted another rib again.

These huge errors were well documented due to the shear size of the hit. It would have been impossible to change a couple of Excel entries to heal these wounds. As crazy as it seems, I found the 2 meetings following these events to be fantastic.

Everyone discussed real issues and developed safeguards to prevent a replay.

Starbucks Decides To Control Waste

Last August, I posted an article Eliminate Chronic Waste which described my observations at a New York coffee shop. This location continuously brewed coffee each 20 minutes. They dumped the previous batch down the drain.

Bloomberg.com reports Starbucks has decided to reduce waste through a policy shift on afternoon decaf brewing procedures. After noon each day, decaf coffee will be available on request. Previously, the decaf coffee was continuously brewed.

Eliminate Chronic Waste

Years back, one of my clients had a policy of brewing coffee fresh every 20 minutes. This simple policy caused an extremely high level of waste in off peak hours. They offered patrons a choice of house brew, hazelnut flavored, and vanilla flavored (regular roast and decaf for all three).

Each afternoon, the coffee sales would slow and the routine began. The staff would habitually dump 6 nearly full pots of coffee down the drain 3 times an hour.

On more than one occasion, I have noticed operators do not adjust production to meet demand. I have seen break rooms at conference centers stocked with the same levels of donuts, bagels, danish and other pastries each day. I asked to see the conference room guest counts and the levels varied from as few as 40 to as high as 300. Most of the day old pastries made it to the staff dining room.

If you observe enough operations over many years, certain patterns emerge. You'll find management strictly controls center of the plate portions in most restaurants. On the flip side, you'll find tremendous waste in condiments, light cream, coffee, fresh baked products, portion packets, etc.

This past weekend, I went out for breakfast at a local spot. My waitress delivered my hot cup of coffee with 6 half & half portion packs. I looked around and noticed I was not singled out for this treatment. You could see many guests loading 3 to 5 of the creamers in their bags.

One of my clients baked rolls fresh all day long. At the restaurants, patrons were served a generous basket of rolls. It was common for patrons to request more rolls and they were always given a second basket. On take-out orders, some locations stuffed a bag with as much as a dozen rolls with each order.

These are all examples of chronic portion control issues which often do not hit the management radar scope. Companies with a passion for precision portion control on meat and seafood items frequently drop the ball on many other high volume items. Eliminating chronic waste and over-portioning will help lower your food cost. Start looking around for obvious issues. Take a second look at your policies.

By matching coffee production to guest counts, managing the number of creamers, rolls, baked goods, etc. and purchasing the proper container size for your needs, you can eliminate most chronic waste.