Category Archives: Restaurant

Less Rice Save Money Day!

Beginning in December, diners in Hong Kong will receive a discount for asking for less rice than usual. Sure, it’ll only be one day a month, but it’s still a neat idea. As the South China Morning Post (log in required) reports: From December, the first Wednesday of each month will be designated “Less Rice Save […]

October 3, 2007 | Also posted in International, Personal | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

No doubt taking a cue from my vociferous stance, an Inuit leader told the Canadian Navy not to dump food waste (and sewage) in arctic waters. — — Here’s an interesting CNN video report on food waste in Hong Kong. A whopping one third of their waste stream is food, compared to 17 percent in […]

September 28, 2007 | Also posted in Friday Buffet, International | Comments closed

The Weekly Waste Word: Restaurant Portions

At the beginning of each week, I try to give readers one tip on how to avoid food waste. This week’s advice: If you don’t like eating leftovers, don’t order an appetizer and an entrée.  Take a look at the nutritional information from Chili’s or the Macaroni Grill. Feel like some pasta and meatballs? Here’s 2,400 calories, […]

September 4, 2007 | Also posted in The Weekly Waste Word | Comments closed

The Weekly Waste Word: Dressed for Spoilage

At the beginning of each week, I try to give readers one tip on how to avoid food waste. This week’s advice: Don’t dress a big salad. You can avoid wilty lettuce waste by serving the salad “dry.” With the dressing on the side, diners can disperse it as they see fit. One of my real pet peeves is […]

August 27, 2007 | Also posted in Household, The Weekly Waste Word | Comments closed

Should Bread be Repurposed?

Kottke.org brings the bread menu holder to our attention. Le Pain Quotidien, a Belgian chain with franchises in N.Y. and L.A, uses bread with slices to store menus. “Cool idea” is the prevailing sentiment in the commentary below Jason Kottke’s photo of the menu holder on flickr. I have to disagree. While it’s by no means the most flagrant wasting I’ve seen, it sets […]

August 23, 2007 | Also posted in History and Culture | Comments closed

Star Power

Wasted Food reader Brian recently commented that making food waste awareness trendy would really reduce squandering. In my mind, trendy = celebrities. As I mentioned in my response to that comment, I’m picturing Brad and Angelina leaving a restaurant with doggy bags as photographers snap away. Barring that miracle, who else would take up this issue? We could probably […]

August 8, 2007 | Posted in Restaurant | Comments closed

Waikiki Worms

Every restaurant, not matter how careful, produces some food waste. Sometimes it originates in the kitchen due to overordering, overpreparing or the inevitable peels and scraps. Often, it comes from the dining room, where diners return half-eaten plates. One way or another, restaurant dumpsters end up full of wet, heavy organic waste. Some of it was edible when discarded (as freegans well know), […]

July 25, 2007 | Also posted in Composting, Waste Stream | Comments closed

Wasting in Hell

One wasted food topic gaining steam on the blog charts is the squandering on the Fox show “Hell’s Kitchen.” The show has celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay runs 12 would-be restaurateurs through a Survivor-like wringer to find the chef who’ll run a Las Vegas restaurant.  TV-centric bloggers have noted the waste in an episode recap. Others recapped the ‘no […]

June 27, 2007 | Posted in Restaurant | Comments closed

About that 27 percent

Whenever the discussion of food waste comes up, the 27 percent figure soon follows. According to the USDA’s helpful research wing–the Economic Research Service (ERS)–that amount of the edible food available for human consumption in the US at retail, restaurant and consumer levels is “lost to human use.” My 3 cents: 1. It’s incomplete. It […]

June 21, 2007 | Also posted in Farm, Processing Plants, Stats, Supermarket | Comments closed

Yesterday’s Sushi

Excess food is a part of the restaurant business.  I believe that reducing surplus food is the ideal, but that requires sacrificing either sales (only order a set amount for each day) or convenience (prepare food to order).  Sometimes those sacrifices just aren’t feasible. It’s what restaurants do with the excess that interests me. They have three main choices: throw it […]

May 29, 2007 | Also posted in Food Recovery, Food Safety | Comments closed