What food waste costs a restaurant, and what to do

Wasted food is food you already paid for, so every dollar you stop binning stays in your till. Put a number on it this week: write down what leaves your kitchen in the trash for seven days, cost it at what you paid, and see how many points of food cost it is. Then work in this order: measure, cut over-prepping, and only then donate what's still good.

How much do restaurants waste?

Nobody can give you your number, but two published sources show the shape. ReFED, a US nonprofit that researches food waste, says in its page on restaurants and foodservice that the sector generated 12.5 million tons of surplus food in 2024, and that more than 85% of it went to landfill or was incinerated. That's a weight, not a bill: the page gives no dollar figure for the sector.

ReFED also splits that surplus by cause. It defines plate waste as customers not eating what they have taken or been served, and puts it at nearly 70% of the total. The UK's WRAP, an organization that works on waste, published a different split in a 2013 overview of UK hospitality and food service outlets (the page is now marked as archived): 920,000 tonnes of food waste a year, three quarters of it food that could have been eaten.

The two disagree a lot on plate waste, about 70% against a third. They count different countries, different years and different kinds of venue, so don't blend them into one number. What they tell you together is that waste comes from several places at once, and that only a count in your own kitchen shows which place is biggest in yours.

Where it happens in your kitchen

Sources group waste differently, but in a kitchen it comes down to four places. Each one needs a different fix.

• Prep trim. Peels, ends, bones and fat. Some can't be avoided. The part you can fix is trimming more than the dish needs, or throwing out what could go in a stock, a staff meal or another dish. The EPA tells businesses to examine their production and handling practices to cut preparation waste, and the WRAP split above has preparation as the largest slice.
• Spoilage. Food that goes off before you use it: wilted greens, fish past its day, milk, bread. It usually comes from ordering more than you sell, or from stock that sits at the back of the walk-in.
• Over-production. Food you made and didn't sell: the soup batch, the extra tray of chicken, the rice left in the well at close. It comes from pars (the amounts you prep for the day) set for a busier day than you had.
• Plate waste. Food a guest was served and left. It's the biggest slice in ReFED's figures, and the fixes are on the menu side: portion size, dishes guests send back, sides nobody finishes.

The first three happen before a guest sees the food, and you can count them at the bin by the prep table. The EPA also advises businesses to measure the type and amount of wasted food in a waste audit and to “Compare purchasing inventory with customer ordering.” If you buy 40 pounds of something a week and sell 30 pounds' worth, the gap is in the bin or in the walk-in.

Put a dollar figure on your waste in a week

You need a sheet, a bus tub and a scale if you have one. This follows the EPA's waste logbook, an archived document, adapted for a small kitchen.

1. 01Put a sheet and a tub where food gets thrown away: the prep table, the line and the dish pit. Everyone who throws food away writes it down.
2. 02Write it down just before it goes in the bin, not at the end of the night. At close you won't remember.
3. 03Write two things for every entry: what it was and why it went. The EPA calls those the two most important details. Use a short list of reasons: trim, spoiled, made too much, dropped or burnt, past its date.
4. 04Weigh it. The EPA suggests putting the waste in an empty bus tub, weighing it and subtracting the tub's own weight later. With no scale, write down portions or volume, like half a pot or 2 gallons.
5. 05Write down food you give away on the same sheet, marked as donated, so it doesn't look like a loss and you can see how much good food is left over.
6. 06Read yesterday's sheet at the start of the next shift. At the end of the week, find the five items that cost the most and talk about them with the team.

Cost it at what you paid

Cost waste at what you paid for it, not at what it would have sold for. For each line, multiply the amount thrown away by the price per pound or per unit on your invoice. For trim, use the price of the whole item, because you paid for every pound of it.

Group the cost by reason. In this example, food that was made too much cost $83, spoilage $73 and trim $24. The biggest reason points to the first fix: here, lower pars.

Plate waste is a different count. The EPA's logbook says food coming back from the dining room is too varied to log item by item. It suggests tracking it about once a month, by the total weight of that trash or a count of bins or bags, on your busiest day, and repeating on the same weekday so the figures can be compared. Look at what's in the bin too. A side nobody finishes is a portion to change.

What a point of food cost is worth

A point of food cost is 1% of your sales. Your food cost percentage is the cost of the food you used divided by your sales, and it already includes everything you threw away: food that left the storeroom and earned nothing still counts as used. So waste is not an extra cost on top of food cost. It's part of it, and the log tells you how big a part.

Say Corner Table gets the made-too-much line down by a third, from $83 to about $55 a week, with the rest of the log unchanged. That's $28 a week, or about $1,440 a year: roughly 0.2 of a point. This is arithmetic on an example, not a forecast. Your first fix may be bigger or smaller, and the log will show you which.

This is why food cost is worth watching alongside labor. Prime cost is your food cost and your labor cost added together, and waste moves the food half of it.

What to do first: measure, cut over-prepping, then donate

1. Measure for a week

Don't change a thing in week one. The log only helps if it shows what really happens, and a kitchen that starts prepping less on day two hides its own numbers. Once you have a week, you know your biggest reason and your top five items.

2. Cut over-prepping

The EPA's Wasted Food Scale ranks preventing wasted food as the most environmentally beneficial option, ahead of donating it. For you it's also the cheapest: food you never make costs you nothing, and food you make and give away still cost you the ingredients and the labor.

• Lower the pars for the three items your log shows you over-prep most, and read next week's log to see what changed.
• Cook smaller batches in slow hours, and a second batch if you need it, instead of one big one for the whole shift.
• Compare what you bought with what you sold of each top-five item. If you buy 40 pounds and sell 30 pounds' worth, order less.
• Use trim: stock, staff meal, a special. Move older stock to the front of the shelf.
• Look at plate waste on your menu: the dishes that come back, and the sides nobody finishes.

There is some evidence on how it turns out, with limits. A February 2019 report from Champions 12.3, a coalition of leaders from government, business and civil society, looked at the costs and savings of 114 restaurants in 12 countries. On average, restaurants saved $7 in operating costs for every $1 they invested in cutting kitchen waste, and cut kitchen waste by 26% within a year. The investments included measuring and monitoring waste, training staff on handling and storage, and redesigning menus. The release doesn't say how the restaurants were chosen and covers restaurants in many countries, so it shows what happened for them, not what will happen for you.

3. Donate what's still good

Once your pars are lower, less is left at close, but some good food will be. On the EPA's scale, donating comes right after preventing. Book a regular pickup with a local food rescue group, where one collects near you. Whether anyone does depends on where you are, so check before you plan around it.

Donate only food that was never served to a guest and was kept cold or hot, or cooled quickly by the safety rules. Anything that went out to a table can't be donated, which rules out plate waste. Your health department and the group you donate to set their own rules, so ask both before your first donation. Our food donation guide has the safety rules and a finder for who may collect near you.

This week

1. 01Print or draw the log sheet: time, who, item, why, amount. Put a tub and a sheet at the prep table, the line and the dish pit, and tell the team why you're doing it.
2. 02Run it for seven days without changing your pars. On day eight, price every line from your invoices and add them up.
3. 03Work out what it is in points: the week's total ÷ your weekly sales. Then check your own food cost percentage and prime cost to see where waste sits in them.
4. 04Pick the top three items and cut their pars. Start the log again next Monday to see what changed.
5. 05When pars are down and some good food is still left, ask your health department and one local food rescue group what they need before you donate.