5 Tips for Reducing Food Waste in Restaurants

These five tips are drawn from direct field experience, measuring, weighing, and facilitating workshops in Swiss restaurants and hotels. They are practical, low-tech, and applicable to any establishment regardless of size or budget.

Tip 1 – Start by Measuring 

"You can’t manage what you don’t measure" and food waste management in restaurants is no exception. Before taking any action, establish a baseline. A simple weighing protocol, carried out over several weeks, is the foundation of any effective food waste management system and it is enough to generate reliable data.
 
An important first step is to distinguish avoidable waste, food that could have been used differently, from unavoidable waste such as coffee grounds, bones or banana peels. Focus your measurement and reduction efforts on avoidable waste. Report it in grams per cover served by category: kitchen preparation, client returns, unsold production. Pair this with a before and after staff questionnaire to measure the evolution of awareness and willingness to act. You need both a quantitative and a human baseline. 

To benchmark your results, Swiss national standards (ZHAW & United Against Waste, 2024) provide useful reference points: below 20g per cover is considered best practice, below 45g is good practice, and above 120g signals a critical threshold requiring immediate action. 

For those who want to go further, separating waste by food type, fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, oils and sauces, allows a CO2 footprint to be calculated per cover, adding an environmental dimension to your data.

This may sound like a lot but it does not have to happen all at once. The approach can be deployed in stages, at different moments, to make it easier to integrate into daily operations. With a little organisation, the team quickly gets into the habit and it becomes a natural part of the routine.
Without this baseline, any action is guesswork.

Tip 2 – Get Management on Board First 

Reducing food waste in restaurants does not require a major time investment from management. What it requires is genuine commitment and that commitment starts with understanding the stakes.

In one Swiss restaurant, management was initially convinced that waste was not a significant issue. The data told a different story: 156g of avoidable waste per cover, three times the national good practice benchmark of 45g, representing an estimated loss of over 130,000 CHF per year. Once they saw the numbers, their perspective shifted immediately.

A single workshop of one to two hours, bringing together management and frontline staff, is enough to align the team, identify the causes, and decide on concrete measures together. The return on that investment is immediate.

Tip 3 – Make Waste Visible

Awareness does not come from visual reminders or a one-off training session alone, though both play a supporting role. It comes from making waste physically concrete and measurable.

There is something intentional in asking staff to weigh and record waste themselves. That simple act creates a direct, physical connection to the problem that automated tracking alone cannot replicate. The moment numbers appear on a scale, conversations start. Staff begin making connections between their daily gestures and what ends up in the bin.

Management rarely sees the waste directly. They are not in the kitchen. Two simple tools can bridge that gap: separating waste by category so the volume of each type becomes visible, or placing a camera above the waste container, a simple connected camera or even a smartphone set to take periodic photos. Seeing images of discarded fish, meat or vegetables has a stronger emotional impact than numbers alone, and brings management closer to the reality of the kitchen.

Data tells you what is happening. People tell you why.

The most valuable part of the process is creating a space where the team, management and frontline staff together, feels safe enough to recognise the issue and willing to engage in changing things themselves.

This is not about top-down instructions. It is about facilitating a collective workshop where causes are discussed openly, measures are decided together, and everyone leaves with a sense of ownership. Decisions made collectively are far more likely to be implemented than those handed down from above.

Every operation is different. The measures that emerge will depend on the specific context, constraints and priorities of each establishment. Examples of actions that frequently come up: reinforcing FIFO storage discipline, switching to daily ordering, favouring seasonal products, reducing the number of dishes during low-frequency periods, posting visual reminders in the kitchen, reviewing bread service, adjusting portion sizes, or optimising buffet management. Smaller serving utensils, plates and containers preserve the perception of abundance while naturally reducing quantities served and wasted.

The goal is not to implement everything but to identify the two or three actions that will make the biggest difference, immediately.

Tip 5 – Build Continuity, Not Just Awareness

A one-off intervention creates awareness. Lasting change requires continuity.

Periodic tracking, whether through internal weighing, food recycling data from your waste collection company, or both, allows you to monitor progress over time, adjust measures based on what the data reveals, and maintain the team’s engagement.

Designating an internal champion is one of the most effective ways to sustain momentum. This is a team member who embodies the approach, keeps it alive in daily conversations, and bridges the gap between the initial intervention and long-term operational change.

Annual training sessions alone are not enough. What makes the difference is a structured follow-up, regular touchpoints, shared results, and visible progress. When the team sees that their efforts are measured and recognised, the motivation to continue grows naturally.