At one of the restaurants I managed, we had issues with high amounts of food waste. Every night, we seemed to throw out quite a bit of food at the end of the shift, and also during the day when production was too high.
To combat the food waste on the night shift, I’d offer the staff the option to replace our brief meeting at the end of the night with a “brief eating” if all that was left over was enough food to feed the staff. In addition, we had to track spoilage all day during the day shift, and if we met the spoilage limit goals for the day, the people who worked during the day shift were rewarded with food on their next shift.
Within a couple days of instituting this policy, it worked! We threw away far less food, and the staff knew to balance wait times with production to ensure quality without waste.
