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The Food Waste Audit The FoodSave team monitored kitchen waste using the Winnow Waste Monitor System at a client site where Vacherin ran the staff restaurant and hospitality catering. The site was already extremely tight on food waste minimisation and used the waste audit to fine-tune their operations. The system required minimal time and caused no disruption to procedures. The FoodSave team met with the Vacherin catering team weekly to review the results and identify actions for waste reduction. Reaping the Benefits Through running the food waste audit the Vacherin team were able to identify the top causes of food waste costs, which pinpointed “prepared not served” waste from the staff restaurant and the waste coming back from hospitality services. Not only did this help the team make changes to their operations such as reducing some batch sizes of high waste items, but it also reinforced that a lot of the good practice already happening on site was making a difference. For example, salad and deli bar items, usually top food waste offenders in staff restaurants, were kept to a minimum to ensure that wastage was reduced and there was tight stock control on perishable items such as fruit and yoghurt pots. Monitoring food waste weekly enabled the catering team to fine-tune operations further resulting in a reduction of prepared not served waste of £129 a week or an estimated £9741 annually when adjusted for sales. Top Tips for Reducing Food Waste ✔ Review highest waste items by weight to see if any savings can be made by buying in pre-trimmed or peeled fruit and veg ✔ Have a food waste bin in the middle of the kitchen so food thrown away is more visible to team members. By simply being more aware of food waste and putting it in full view means that people become more conscious and careful as result ✔ Keep batch sizes to a minimum on expensive food items such as sandwich fillers on the deli ✔ Monitor stock control on perishable items ✔ Be inventive with leftover batches of mains, such as using up curries as jacket station fillings www.foodsave.com A FoodSave Case Study £25,000.00 FoodSave helped reinforce that the best practice food savings methods of the Vacherin kitchen team really were making a difference and enabling us to make small adjustments to operations which added up to make big savings to the bottom line. Anthony Kingsley, Sustainability & CSR Lead Vacherin Cost savings = estimated up to Specialist London caterer Vacherin offers an innovative, bespoke service to a number of business organisations and is recognised as one of the industry’s front-runners in sustainable solutions, having won two awards in the Sustainable Food category at the Sustainable City Awards. Being identified as one of the most sustainable businesses in the country, FoodSave was a logical step for Vacherin to review waste in its catering operations. Vacherin
