Carving out benefits tackling food waste

• Busy pub-restaurant discovers vast waste-reduction opportunities through better customer relations and serving practices
• ‘First-come, first-served' and 'when it’s gone, it’s gone’ policy delivers the goods

The Manor House at Lydstep, near Tenby, is a busy and successful pub that regularly attracts hundreds of diners during peak hours. Plate waste as a percentage is a significant issue here, making up the vast majority of food waste in the pub’s very popular Sunday lunch service.

Brothers, General Manager Gareth Scarfe and Head Chef Darren Scarfe embraced ‘Your Business is Food; don’t throw it away’ (YBIF) and were very eager to see what measures could be put in place to help reduce waste and save money.

The restaurant's Sunday carvery offered every type of roast meat and a variety of vegetables throughout the day, but produced large amounts of leftovers, according to observations made as part of YBIF's Step 1. The cost of that waste was calculated to be € 92.97 (£ 83.22) over a three-day monitoring period, which represented a cost of 9 cents (8 p) per cover. This included nearly € 44.69 (£ 40) in food waste every Sunday, which scaled up to some € 9 456 per year, hence a significant potential for cost savings.

An Action Plan (Step 2) was developed which included a ‘first-come, first-served' and 'when it’s gone, it’s gone’ policy to minimise carvery leftovers. The carvery also planned to introduce a new booking practice to track orders and better pinpoint how much food should be prepared to match demand.

Key impacts

Since trialling YBIF, the pub carvery has updated its booking system to display the number of covers ordering so that the kitchen has a more accurate picture of how much food to prepare. A good range of meats is available, but the introduction of a ‘first-come, first-served’ carvery policy has reduced leftovers significantly.

Salads are now offered and ordered individually, refining demand and preventing unnecessary kitchen preparation time and food wastage. YBIF has also influenced a new front of house approach to encourage smaller portions on the customers’ first plate, explaining that they can ask for more.

Other food-service businesses are encouraged to try the YBIF three-day tracking sheet and calculator to give them insights into how much food they are throwing away and what it costs their business. For even more insights and detail, the seven-day tracking sheet over a month, with YBIF calculator tool helps calculate purchase costs and true waste cost values for each business. Access to the full suite of YBIF resources is available in the source information section.