Food waste costs the Scottish hospitality sector an estimated £215 million each year, so even small changes can make a big difference to your business.
If you run a hotel, restaurant, café or takeaway, reducing food waste can help you make long-term savings while improving sustainability.
Our Commercial Waste Team can support your business to reduce food waste and manage any unavoidable waste more effectively. This can help you lower disposal costs and, over time, reduce the number or size of food waste collections required.
How your business can reduce food waste
A simple way to get started is to focus on three key steps: targeting, measuring and taking action.
Start by setting a clear goal for reducing food waste within your business. You can then measure where waste is occurring, for example by separating spoilage, preparation and plate waste to identify patterns. Involving your team is important, as consistent action across your business will have the greatest impact.
Small changes, big savings
Making small, practical changes can help you reduce waste, save money and make better use of your ingredients. Food waste also carries hidden costs, including staff time and energy use, so reducing waste can improve overall efficiency.
In the UK, around 1 in 6 meals served is wasted. By taking simple steps, you can reduce this within your own business.
Avoiding food spoilage
- Rotate your stock.
- Discount produce to use up ingredients near their expiry date.
- Tailor your menu to use up ingredients near their expiry date.
- Offer special deals on ingredients nearing their expiry date or in surplus.
- Review storage temperatures.
- Talk to suppliers about the ingredients that they recommend, consider local produce and buying direct from the farmer with lower food miles.
- Forecast your customers' demand and only cook food to order.
- Introduce a clear ordering system so that your food business has a record of previous orders for comparison.
Reducing waste at the food preparation stage
- Keep the skins on vegetables such as potatoes.
- Utilise all the product.
- Consider using pre-prepared ingredients.
- Formalise recipe instructions.
- Build in ingredient cross-over to your recipes so that substitute ingredients can be used.
- Use the same ingredients in multiple recipes.
- Remove less popular dishes from your menu and offer a smaller menu; there may be less choice but you (and your customers) will be valuing your food more.
Reducing plate waste
- Watch the plates coming back into the kitchen; these will show you what foods are consistently being wasted.
- Reduce portion sizes.
- Reduce the size of the plate.
- Make garnishes optional.
- Grow your own, even small scale such as herbs; they are tastier and can be picked only when needed.
- Have smaller side options.
- Provide 'Good to Go' boxes for leftovers - view more information on Zero Waste Scotland's Good to Go Doggy Bag Initiative.
Useful resources
There is a range of support available to help businesses reduce food waste and improve efficiency.
Zero Waste Scotland offers business support, including virtual assessments to help identify opportunities to cut costs and reduce waste. They also provide tools and guidance to support food waste reduction. Find out more by visiting their business support webpage or email [email protected].
You can also explore WRAP's Food Waste Reduction Roadmap Toolkit, which includes food tracking tools and templates to help you measure and manage food waste within your business.
Sign up to Zero Waste Scotland's online food redistribution match-making service, helping connect businesses with surplus food to organisations that can use it.
Further information
Contact our Commercial Services Waste Team by calling 01738 476476 or email [email protected].
