Top Strategies to Reduce Restaurant Food Waste Through Technology

It’s no secret that food waste is inevitable in the restaurant industry. From spillage and spoilage to over-preparation and order inaccuracies, the avenues for waste are plentiful. However, when food waste goes unchecked, restaurateurs face higher operational costs, lower margins, and essentially, money out the window.

Restaurant staff are all human—this personal touch is a hallmark of the industry. So while achieving zero waste may be ideal, it’s not always feasible in such a dynamic environment.

The key is to minimize waste wherever possible and leverage technology to help uncover areas of opportunity. With the right software, restaurants can combat waste inefficiencies by automating inventory management and improving forecasting, maintaining tighter control over COGS, and enhancing profit margins.

All back-of-house operations can be streamlined with a cloud-based inventory management platform, where stock levels are visible in real time. These critical data points of how and when inventory is used influence par levels, plate costs, portion control, and recipe costs.

Therefore, it’s critical to update inventory as the kitchen receives, uses, and sells its inventory. When conducting regular inventory checks, staff can monitor levels more closely and ensure that reported levels in the software match the actual stock on hand, preventing over and underordering.

Restaurant inventory management software equips teams with the ability to log waste events at the touch of a button. Whether the waste is due to expired items, contamination, or accidents like dropped food, this feature not only tracks which items are most frequently wasted but also helps identify the reasons behind these events.

Once staff have tracked waste events for a few months, you can leverage the software's reports to conduct a waste audit and identify patterns in the data. Then, you can take the appropriate steps to address issues head-on, whether that’s through retraining staff, restructuring your ordering process, or adjusting your menu.

Setting a par level for each inventory item helps restaurants order only the minimum necessary to meet expected customer demand. An inventory management platform enables staff to automatically submit purchase orders and fill to par for any item. However, customer demand continuously fluctuates in the restaurant industry, and last week’s par level may leave you with too much inventory on hand for the following week.

With data-driven forecasting, inventory management software sets dynamic par levels for each item based on historical consumption and sales data from a connected POS system. Leveraging AI, restaurants can more accurately predict future inventory needs, automate reordering, negotiate better with suppliers, and prevent overstocking. Embracing technological tools enables restaurants to operate more efficiently and economically, turning the challenge of waste into an opportunity for innovation, improvement, and profitability.

MarketMan is cloud-based restaurant inventory management software that automates back-of-house operations. It empowers restaurateurs to streamline their business, control costs, manage purchasing, and eliminate labor-intensive manual work—all on one easy-to-use platform.