Sampling Stops Waste

Geno’s Chowder, in Portsmouth, N.H., has a great idea for avoiding plate waste: samples. As this article discusses,

At Geno’s, a customer can sample anything — from the chowders to the lobster meat — before making his or her choice. Fernald said she hated to see food wasted and this way the customer gets to make sure they want what they’re ordering.

While this idea wouldn’t work in all restaurants, it’s a neat idea. If diners don’t dislike their food, there’s a much better chance the restaurant won’t be tossing mostly full plates.

The idea reminds me of sampling schemes in ice cream shops. I often try out different flavors before deciding and I’ve never left an ice cream cone unfinished. Then again, who has? 

May 24, 2007 | Posted in Restaurant | Comments closed

Sorting Waste

The National Restaurant Asociation’s 2007 Restaurant Show concluded Tuesday. While I wasn’t able to attend–they make journalists jump through many, many hoops–apparently environmental awareness was a big theme there.

Exhibitors displayed plenty of recycling innovations like compostable cups made from corn. Much more exciting, though, LeanPath, Inc. unveiled its ValuWaste product. This product assesses the composition of food waste in a restaurant or cafeteria’s waste, allowing its managers to reduce that squandering.

The Portland-based company collected data for two years at participating schools, hospitals and office cafeterias and found that 63 percent of food waste came from making too much. That “overproduction” dwarfs the next biggest source–kitchen trimmings at 20 percent.

Also, preconsumer waste comprises 4 to 7 percent of the total food cost. That’s before customers have a chance to throw away half their plates. The full data is found in this article, but in general: “Based on dollars lost, the foods most wasted are starches, produce and soup.”

                                  

 

May 23, 2007 | Posted in Institutional, Restaurant, Stats, Technology | Comments closed

Lunchlady Laments

Most of us can remember the euphoria of zipping out the school door for…RECESS! Yet, that rush often means uneaten food is tossed in the trash.

Studies have found that when lunch is after recess, elementary school students eat more and waste less–about 30 percent less (recess-before-lunch-powerpoint.ppt). And according to a 1996 survey, 78 percent of cafeteria managers cited “attention on recess, free time, socializing” as the most likely reason children waste food. Less than 5 percent of elementary schools eat after recess, but those that do find their trash bins lighter and their students more energetic. 

A Highlands Ranch, Colo., school is putting the theory to the test. As you can see in the TV news report on the topic, Bear Canyon Ranch Elementary will switch to post recess lunch in July. 

According to the segment, statistics from a recess-then-lunch school in Montana swayed Bear Canyon Ranch school officials. Montana schools reported a 70 to 80 percent drop in the amount of beverages wasted after switching to recess before lunch.

May 22, 2007 | Posted in School, Stats | Comments closed

Talkin’ Turkey

Apparently wasted food is a hot topic in Turkey. According to Today’s Zaman, an English-language daily paper linked to The Times of London, food waste is a problem in Turkey.

In this article and a more comprehendible news roundup, the paper reported that one-third of the food from all-inclusive hotels’ buffets goes to waste. The data is from a 2006 study by the Food and Beverage Managers’ Association (YÄ°YDER), whose President, Aydın Özdemir, blamed hotel staff for poor planning and providing cheap food and hotel guests for taking too much. 

Pointing to the extent of wastefulness at hotels, Özdemir said, “Wastefulness is at the highest level at hotels. About 30 percent of prepared meals are thrown away. The percentage of dumped food and beverage grows significantly in July and August. This stems from a lack of planning, presentation faults and disapproval of customers.”

Yet, as seen in the news roundup, the tourism industry shot back. It blamed the waste solely on hotel guests.

The chairman of professional kitchen managers, Ali Rıza Dölkeleş, linked the waste of food with people’s greed in taking more food than they need.

While it’s probable that the blame should be shared, it’s virtually certain that eat-all-you-like buffets cause great amounts of waste.

May 21, 2007 | Posted in International, Restaurant, Stats | Comments closed

Rocky Closing

Restaurants certainly throw away their share of food. From making too much food to overordering, their dumpsters are full of food that should either go to the hungry or be composted.

A recent article in Akron, Ohio’s The Beacon Journal brought to light a special circumstance that often elevates food waste–restaurant closings. While occurring far less than the day-to-day restaurant squandering, restaurant closings aren’t as rare as you’d imagine. About half of all new restaurants don’t make it past their first birthday.

The report detailed the closing of a Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Rocky River Grill House, an experimental concept eatery from Darden Restaurants, an Orlando-based company that owns Red Lobster, Olive Garden and Smokey Bones. The company closed the Grill House on a Saturday and made a call to Kent Social Services in an attempt to donate the excess food.

There’s only one problem: the mostly volunteer food recovery group doesn’t operate on weekends. By the time food service director Debby Missimi got the message Monday morning, pounds and pounds of steaks and other edibles had rotted in the dumpster.

If Darden sincerely wanted to donate the food, wouldn’t they have called the food pantry ahead of time to arrange a weekend pickup? You can be sure the non-profit would have made a special trip for a significant amount of meat, as most food pantries struggle to obtain enough protein. 

The article’s insightful last line provides an apt summary:

Somewhere, that Saturday night as the food sat rotting in the setting sun, someone went to bed hungry in Akron.

May 18, 2007 | Posted in Restaurant | Comments closed

Hunger Stamps

Wasted food wouldn’t be as significant of a problem if there weren’t people without enough to eat. But there are and probably always will be. Throughout human history, hunger has persisted. Even today, when the U.S. has the means to marginalize it–imagine if we spent as much on ending hunger as we did on our defense budget–we don’t.

In an effort to raise hunger awareness, the co-leaders of the House Hunger Caucus called on members of congress to take the Food Stamp Challenge by subsisting for a week on $21 of food stamps, the average amount given to recipients. Sadly, only two lawmakers (out of 435!) accepted.

With Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, and Janice Schakowsky, D-Ill., plus the caucus co-leaders Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., and Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., that makes a total of four. McGovern and his wife Lisa are blogging about the experience , as is Ryan (he even scanned in his supermarket receipt!).

Kudos to these four for bringing attention to hunger, especially Emerson for continuing the legacy of her late husband Bill, who introduced the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act that shields food donors from liability lawsuits.

Now it’s time for the colleagues of these four members to raise the antiquated amounts food stamps provide. An average budget of $3 per day/$1 per meal just doesn’t cut it.  

May 17, 2007 | Posted in Household, Hunger, Supermarket | Comments closed

Ends Justified

Ever wonder what happens to those sub roll ends that are cut off in the making of your sandwich? If you guessed “thrown out,” you’d be correct…until recently!

David Krasner and Mike Teunis, both 16 and Quizno’s employees in Frederick, Md., witnessed this common form of wasted food every day they worked at the sub shop. As reported in The Frederick News, they’ve found a use for these loaf ends: serving them to the hungry alongside crock pot stews or stir-frys.

While David and Mike have a healthy dose of teen angst (“They’re taking away everything,” David said. “Kids have nothing to do.”), they’ve put it to good use. They formed a local chapter of Food Not Bombs and are repurposing some of the discarded bread.

Calls to the Frederick Quizno’s could neither confirm nor deny whether this repurposing is done with the sub shop’s knowledge (language was a bit of a barrier on the phone). Either way, it’s a neat use for a clear example of food waste. 

One question remains: if sub shops want square-ended bread, why not just bake them that way?

May 16, 2007 | Posted in Food Recovery, Restaurant | Comments closed

Boxing Out Composting

It should surprise no one that San Francisco leads the way in food composting. The city offers green bins that sends household and restaurant food waste and yard trimmings to Jepson Prarie Organics in Vacaville, Calif., where they are composted.

Combined with the regular, blue recycling cart and the black, garbage cart, participating San Francisco homes have three receptacles. In Oxford, England, where they are attempting to implement a similar food recycling program, food recycling would bring the per home total to seven bins! Given that glut, it’s not surprising that the scheme is encountering some obstacles.  

This comment, edited for brevity, makes a lot of sense to me:

THIS IS INSANITY. Another box? That could make 7 per property…All the plastic used to make these boxes could have made large bottle-bank style bins for every street (like mainland Europe has). Cheaper collection costs, and helps build a sense of community.

While it’s great that Oxford City Council will soon divert organics from landfills, it would be better served to follow San Francisco or nearby Cherwell’s lead. In a pilot program, Cherwell’s District Council will ask residents to follow the traditional model by including food scraps in their garden waste bins.

Regardless of how, it is high time Cherwell collect its food waste. At present, food comprises 45 percent of the English district’s landfill!

May 15, 2007 | Posted in Household, International | Comments closed

Beach (Food) Rescue II

I recently wrote about A Second Helping, an operation that takes food donations from those departing vacation rentals on the N.C. Coast. Well, I just heard from John Hodges, who started 2nd Loaf, the food recovery operation that begat A Second Helping.

Hodges’ group, a ministry from the Little Chapel on the Boardwalk, operates at Wrightsville Beach, N.C. They recover about 3,000 pounds of food each summer.

Hodges and the rest of his fellow congregants got the idea from a group called Second Loaf located in the western North Carolina mountains. In addition to sharing a name (sort of), the groups are affiliated.  For those scoring at home, the lineage looks like this: Second Loaf–2nd Loaf–A Second Helping.

Second Loaf began as a way to redirect leftovers from gatherings at the National Presbyterian Church’s Conference Center in Montreat to the local food bank in Asheville, N.C. For those of you vacationing in N.C., there’s a “network” of vacation food recovery groups from the mountains to the sea.

OK, there are only five (that I know about), but it seems like the idea is spreading. Hodges wrote:

In the past 7 years we have had at least a dozen inquiries from tourists on how they can take this concept back to their tourist home towns. Though we do not keep official contacts with them, I’ve been told we have one in California, Arizona , Colorado and of course several up and down the NC Coast line. 

    2nd-loaf-poster.jpg

May 14, 2007 | Posted in Food Recovery | Comments closed

Student Work

With graduation in the air (colleges, at least), I thought I’d share this school-related story.

I recently corresponded with a ninth grader named Kristin on the topic of food waste. She was writing a social studies paper on hunger and waste, and she contacted me after finding this site. This was the second time a high schooler had written me on the topic, which is two more times than I expected.

Kristin was good enough to e-mail me her final paper, an impressive report well beyond her years, and I wanted to share it with you. Those who bemoan the state of American education, read her report: kristin-w-final-paper.pdf (And I’m not just saying that because she quoted me.)

To whet your appetite, here’s how she describes her school cafeteria:

Trash cans spilled over with uneaten tater tots, cookies and sandwiches, waiting to be taken away to a landfill to rot. 

May 11, 2007 | Posted in General, School | Comments closed