6 tips to fight against food waste in your restaurant

In France, in collective and commercial catering, food waste represents 1.4 million tons of waste each year; that is 14% of food waste that comes from food professionals. Yet, since February 2016, the Garot law forces restaurants to distribute their unsold food, under penalty of a fine that can go up to 0.1% of turnover.

In addition to distributing your unsold food, we share 6 concrete solutions to fight food waste and make your business more eco-responsible.

What about wine? Discover our tips to keep an opened bottle of wine and avoid waste!

1. Distribute your food waste

This is the solution that is mandatory by law. The good news is that it is also extremely easy to do. Entrepreneurs have launched several successful initiatives and have developed a new market for the management of unsold food.

Numerous applications have emerged in recent years. Fresh Me Up, for example, offers professional customers the opportunity to buy their overstock from wholesalers, local merchants or even directly from local producers during private sales at attractive prices. Too Good To Go and Phenix offer to sell the unsold goods of the day (from bakeries, fast food restaurants, supermarkets or others) to individuals at reduced prices.

2. Combine a reduced menu with limited cutlery

The problem of food waste usually comes from poor stock management and a poor understanding of the number of covers for the day. One solution to this problem is to limit the number of dishes on the menu (e.g. two starters, two main courses and two desserts).

The second solution would be to limit the number of places offered and to set up an online reservation system to identify in advance how many people will be able to come to your establishment.

3. Favour short circuits

This consists in selling and buying the product directly from its place of production. The number of intermediaries is thus reduced to a minimum. By limiting the number of intermediaries, you minimize the risks of losses linked to transport (losses linked to an interruption of the cold chain for example). Bonus: this will allow you at the same time to reduce your ecological footprint linked to transport, and to value the small producers.

4. Create a home farm or a compost

What if instead of throwing away your waste, you used it? If you are in the country, your chickens, pigs or your neighbors' pigs will be happy to eat the leftovers or vegetable peels. Otherwise, a simple compost at the bottom of the garden will do the trick.

For city dwellers, many associations and organizations have created collective composting bins to collect biodegradable waste.

5. Transform your products

When developing your menus, think about how you can combine recipes. Vegetable peelings and meat carcasses are perfect for making tasty broths, carrot or radish tops make delicious pestos, leftover vegetables can be incorporated into a mixed salad... Be inventive!

6. Offer doggy bags to your customers

As of July 1, 2021, restaurants are required to provide reusable or recyclable containers to any customer requesting to take the rest of their meal home. If you notice that a lot of plates are coming back to the kitchen with leftovers, don't hesitate to brief your waiters so that they highlight this practice and offer a doggy bag to your customers at the end of the meal.