How to Waste Less in Your Restaurant

How to Waste Less in Your Restaurant 1

Waste in a kitchen is inevitable. However, you don’t want to experience a significant amount of waste because it cost your business unnecessary money loss. When you own a restaurant it is expected that you will run into food will get burned or patrons will return food to the kitchen that they don’t like. You can control certain things, though. For example, there’s no need to throw out leftovers, unopened jars, and more because they are passed their expiration date. There are plenty of things that you can do, including implementing some technology that will offer POS inventory management.

How to Waste Less in Your Restaurant
How to Waste Less in Your Restaurant

Conduct Accurate Inventory

Inventory management isn’t a strong in many restaurants. When inventory day comes around, the chefs or managers usually rush through the process. This is often because they don’t have an accurate counting system in place. A POS inventory management system can provide count sheets, allowing you to know what you have on hand. When you do the inventory count, you will know what you need and what you don’t need. It prevents you from blind ordering ingredients that you may already have plenty of. When this happens, discarding expired products is inevitable. This will also drive up your food cost.

Inventory should be done as accurately as possible. When you have a POS system that ties more information together, you can get accurate reports. It will help with ordering, menu preparation, and more. Without a good count, you could be spending more money than what you can really afford.

Review POS Reports

Reports from a comprehensive POS system can tell you a lot about what’s happening in your restaurant. You can manage food costs more effectively by avoiding waste. If you review what items you’re not selling, you can take them off of your menu rather than continuing to buy ingredients that you don’t use. Otherwise, you’re buying ingredients again and again only to watch them expire.

It might be time to update your menu if there are quite a few items that are non-sellers. You may also want to consider repurposing some of the ingredients that are leftover or close to expiring as a “special of the night.” Using the food is a lot better than having to throw it away because, at least, you’re in control of it. Plus, you can incorporate some seasonal produce into the dishes to appeal to foodies.

Practice FIFO

Often, items get tossed because of not practicing first In, first out methods. When this happens, you may have to throw various items away because they have already expired by the time that you get to them.

New technology is even becoming available to tell you when food is able to expire. These sensors can send you texts so that you can use the food before it ends up being thrown into the trash can.

Food waste in restaurants is common. A little is normal. When it starts to become a lot, such as throwing out entire cases of food that expired, it’s a sign that you need to get on top of the problem. Implementing new technology can help your restaurant overcome food waste once and for all.

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