3 common mistakes in food waste prevention

Food waste prevention in commercial kitchens can be relatively simple. To make it even easier, here are three common mistakes you should avoid:

1. Lack of planning.

Planning is everything. Planning is 80% of your work. The other 20% is executing. Without proper planning, everything seems like a major time-consuming task.

You will never have time to ‘play around’ with by-products if you don’t know how you will consistently use them in a sensible way. So the solution is to figure out how you can consistently use a product that wasn’t used before. Plan for it.

And what if you have too much food waste in a bin but no time to do something about it? That time will never be there unless you intentionally create it and plan for it.

Plan how you will use everything that’s in the bin. Imagine how you will be able to consistently, in the long term, eliminate the food waste that you create right now.

Not once, when you feel inspired or when you are less busy than usual. But consistently, every day, under any circumstances.

This is why planning is important and should never be skipped. 

2. Trying to do everything at once.

Don’t try to eliminate 100% of your food waste overnight. Not even next week, and not even next month. 

Instead, focus on one or two things at a time.

You might feel inspired to go big and eliminate everything that’s in your bin, but it can easily backfire.

Think about what creates the majority of your food waste. Figure out how you can eliminate that first, before doing something else.

What is the next easiest type of food waste you can eliminate? Do that next. But not without planning on how you can make that a new standard.

Slow and steady wins the game of food waste prevention.

3. Lack of communication.

If you are the only one in your kitchen with a passion for food waste prevention, you won’t get too far. There is a proverb that says, ‘If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.’

This applies perfectly to many things, including implementing changes in work. Reducing food waste will certainly require you to implement changes.

Share your ideas with your team - whether senior or junior- and tell them why it’s important. Share why it personally matters to you, and provide guidance and support.

Make sure everyone understands and is on board with your ideas. If not, keep repeating and keep taking actions to create a ‘new normal’. Do not leave your colleagues out of this, as they are an essential part of the change. In times of change, it’s better to overcommunicate than to undercommunicate.

So here you have it: the three most common mistakes I see in food waste prevention. 

Lack of planning. Trying to do everything at once and a lack of communication.

Make sure you avoid these.