Restaurant waste management is an incredibly important part of keeping your restaurant profitable. While waste is (unfortunately) a fact of life, there are a lot of ways that you can cut down on unnecessary waste. From compost to simple creativity, restaurant waste management doesn’t have to be all about obsessively managing portions (though that helps too).
In this blog, we’ll take a look at how restaurant waste management works, why it’s so important, and how to manage it in your restaurant.
Understanding Restaurant Waste Management
There are several types of waste to worry about when establishing a plan for restaurant waste management. Each needs to be handled in its own way.
Organic Waste
Organic waste is likely the most common type of waste that your restaurant will create. This is, put simply, food — veggies, fruit, meat, bread, all of it counts as organic waste. The main differentiating feature between organic and non-organic waste is that there are a lot more ways to reuse organic waste than with recyclables or trash.
The two most common ways that you’ll see restaurant waste management handle organic waste are through reuse/repurposing of scraps (think stocks and sauces) and compost. Compost is an especially interesting way to manage organic waste, as it’s often possible to sell your compost, leading to a cycle between you and the farmer(s) that buy your compost. Composting will require space and time, though, so be prepared to find space and get ready to wait.
Beyond compost and the garbage bin, though, there are other ways to get some use out of scrap. For meat, fish, and bones, stocks or demi glace are a great way to repurpose something that would otherwise be trash. Veggie scraps also help with stocks, but they can be charred and put to use in sauces to bring a bit more body. Just be sure that your scraps aren’t past being usable.
The last type of organic waste that you should be recycling is your cooking oil. If you have a fryer, find a service that converts used oil into biodiesel; you can sell it back to them after use more often than not, and even if you have to pay for the pickup, you’ll be able to cut one more type of waste out of the works.
Recyclable Waste
Recyclable waste is generally a pretty easy thing to handle in most restaurants. While the availability of recycling services in your area may vary (especially in rural areas of the US), it’s often as simple as contacting your waste management company and asking for a recycling dumpster and pickup.
Keep in mind that not all plastic is recyclable and that cardboard that’s come into contact with food is also not recyclable.
Non-recyclable Waste
Non-recyclable waste is, put simply, trash. It’s a fact of all restaurants that needs careful management to avoid an overflowing bin. The only advice that matters here is timing — be sure that you schedule regular pickups. In fact, it’s generally best to be a bit overzealous when it comes to trash pickups, as nobody wants a gross, fly-filled dumpster next to them while they’re eating.
Steps to Develop a Restaurant Waste Management Plan
If you want to get on top of your restaurant waste management, you’ll need a plan. While it’s not the most complicated task, it does require a bit of planning ahead and, importantly, time. So — let’s get on it.
Conducting a Waste Audit
First things first, it’s important to find the parts of your business that create the most waste. Chances are that it’s your prep or line cooks, as waste is a part of the job, so that means it’s time to figure out what causes the most waste.
Most people monitor waste by weight, generally opting to use a trash bin that’s exclusively for “waste” (rather than the stuff that’s swept off the floor, wrapping, gloves, etc). This allows you to physically weigh your waste and see growth or shrinkage in it over time. If you opt for this approach, talk to your staff — if they’re not using the waste bin correctly, you won’t be able to properly account for it all.
From here, it’s a matter of getting what you’ve learned written down so you can set some goals.
Setting Waste Reduction Goals
Waste reduction goals are a great way to help with restaurant waste management. They allow you to establish a clear path forward not only for your staff, but for the restaurant itself. By getting ahead of waste management with clear goals, you’re able to clearly see what progress, if any, that you make in a month.
After you’ve gotten a month or so into your goals, begin to reevaluate what’s working. You may find that some staff members are great at managing waste, while others aren’t. If so, schedule them together to allow those that are better to help those that aren’t.
Similarly, if you notice that specific tasks cause a lot of waste, try to schedule them so that they can be monitored. A common example of this is breaking down fish; if your prep cooks are good at the task but not efficiently managing waste, coach them! Find a day to break down a few for them to show knife skills and what to save for stock, rather than just tossing it in the bin and calling it a day.
Waste Segregation and Storage
Separating your waste from your food is an obvious, but crucial, final step. You’ll need an area to hold all of your trash, recycling, and compost/oil stores while they wait for pickup.
Waste Reduction Strategies for Restaurants
Reducing Food Waste
Food waste is extremely important when it comes to restaurant waste management. As mentioned above, there are likely to be specific dishes or tasks that eat up a lot of waste. If so, it’s time to consider how you can repurpose food that’s close to dying or is just scrap. Common examples include:
- Compost (fruit and veg)
- Stock/demi (meat, fish, and bones)
- Breadcrumbs or croutons (for stale bread)
- Rendered fat (when trimming meat)
While these are the most common, they’re far from the only options at your disposal. Depending on what you serve and how busy you are, chances are that you can find quite a few options to cut food waste.
Partnering with Waste Management Services
Partnering with waste management services is an incredibly important part of restaurant waste management.
Find a local trash and recycling pickup service and get them scheduled to come out, get you a dumpster, and begin regular pickups. A good rule of thumb is that most restaurants will need trash pickup between once and twice a week, depending on their size and that of their dumpster.
From there, it’s on to find people to help with recycling, composting, and reusing old cooking oil.
Recycling and Composting
Once again, we’ve touched on this, but it’s worth saying: compost your food and recycle your recyclables! They’re two sides of the same coin in that both allow you to turn trash into something useful. While compost is the obvious choice here, especially for restaurants that are already partnered with a local farm or mycologist, it’s not for everyone.
Some spaces simply won’t have the room to safely compost; others will have more than enough room but no clear path to sell it. So, before you dive into composting and recycling, check around. See what other restaurants in your area do, who they go to, and reach out! You’d be surprised how many people want to help get composting and recycling to be a bit more mainstream.
Employee Training and Engagement
As always, it’s time for us to talk about training your employees. This is such an overlooked fact of life, but training doesn’t stop when they know the basics of the job; it should be non-stop and consistent — but not in a negative way. Instead, we want to engage our employees with the work and, importantly, show them that we see their hard work.
As such, even if you’re dealing with a bunch of wasteful employees, it’s important to frame it as a way to help improve efficiency. Talk to your chefs and bartenders about composting, show them how to properly recycle (and what not to recycle), and get everyone on the same page. Restaurant waste management begins and ends with your employees, so this is absolutely crucial.
Monitoring and Evaluating Your Waste Management Plan
Once you have a restaurant waste management plan in place, it’s time for the long game — monitoring. This means tracking how much is regularly wasted, keeping an eye on the compost and oil trap, and keeping up on trash and recycling pickups. While it’s not glamorous work, it is absolutely crucial to the health of your restaurant.
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