Wastage: counting it before it becomes food cost

Food cost is a monthly verdict. It tells you the month went badly and leaves you guessing between over ordering, over portioning, theft and waste.

Wastage is the same information with the cause still attached, and it costs about thirty seconds a day to collect.

Count units, not dollars

Asking staff to record the value of what they threw out turns a ten second job into a calculation, and the number that comes back is a guess.

Ask for the item and the quantity. Six croissants, two litres of milk, a tray of brownies. You know what those cost, so the conversion happens once, on your side, and the person at the bin is answering a question they can answer accurately.

Record the reason, in four words or fewer

The reason is what makes the record useful, and a free text box gets you nothing usable. Give people a short fixed list.

• Out of date, which points at ordering or rotation.
• Over production, which points at prep levels against the day.
• Made wrong, which points at training or a rushed service.
• Customer returned, which points at quality or at a menu description.
• Spoiled or damaged, which points at storage, a fridge, or a delivery.

Each reason has a different fix and a different person who can fix it, which is exactly what one blended food cost percentage destroys.

Count it at the bin, on the shift

Wastage recorded at the end of the week is remembered wastage, and people remember the big items and forget the steady ones. The steady ones are the problem.

Keep the record where the waste happens, on the phone or a tablet in the kitchen, and make it a line rather than a form. Anything longer than a few seconds gets done for the first fortnight and then stops.

Read it by item, not by day

A daily total tells you whether yesterday was bad. The useful view is by item across a month, because that is where the pattern lives.

Build it as a table with the item, the quantity, the reason and the date, then put it on a dashboard grouped by item. The top three items are usually responsible for most of the value, and they are usually the same three every month until somebody changes something.

Prep levels are where most of it is fixed

Over production is the largest category in most cafes, and it comes from prepping to a number somebody set once for a Saturday and never revisited for a Tuesday.

Once you can see which items are thrown out on which days, prep levels stop being a tradition. Par levels for a cafe covers why the textbook formula runs out on a Sunday and what to use instead.

Tell the team what the counting found

Staff record wastage honestly for as long as they believe it is being used. The fastest way to kill the habit is to collect it for three months and never mention it.

Put one number on the wall and change it weekly. When a change to prep levels drops a line, say which change did it and who suggested it. The count is only worth having if the kitchen can see it working.

What to do first

• Ask for item and quantity, and convert to dollars yourself
• Give five fixed reasons rather than a free text box
• Put the record at the bin, on the shift, as a single line
• Group by item over a month and look at the top three
• Change prep levels for the days the data names
• Show the team the result, weekly, or the counting stops