Cut food waste without cutting the menu

Food waste is usually 4–10% of a restaurant's food cost, and almost none of it is tracked. You feel it as "we're spending more on produce lately," never as a number you can act on. The fix isn't a smaller menu — it's visibility.

Log it for two weeks

Put a simple rule in place: if it goes in the bin, it gets logged — what, how much, and why (spoilage, prep error, overproduction, breakage). Two weeks of honest logging turns a vague worry into a ranked list. Almost always, one or two items account for most of the loss.

Read the reasons, not just the totals

• Spoilage concentrated on one item → you're over-ordering it. Cut the par.
• Overproduction at end of service → your prep pars are set for a busier night than you actually have.
• Prep errors → a training or station-setup issue, not a purchasing one.

Close the loop with counts

Waste tracking and stock counts are the same habit pointed at two moments — what you threw away, and what you have left. Together they tell you where the gap between "bought" and "sold" is going. When the number is in front of the person doing the ordering, the over-ordering quietly stops.

You don't need a spreadsheet or a new hire. You need the log to take ten seconds and live where the rest of your numbers already are.