Take a look at the garbage can in any foodservice operation, and you’ll see perfectly edible food that’s been tossed away: discarded ends of bread loaves, gnarled produce, broken clams, beet roots and more. If they could be repurposed as meal ingredients, they’d not only be saved from landfill, they’d become a profitable revenue stream for your menu. Reducing food waste is more important than ever. According to the USDA, food loss and waste in the United States accounts for approximately 31 percent—or 133 billion pounds—of the overall food supply available to retailers and consumers.

Step one: Connect with growers

Minneapolis’ Common Roots Café, which describes itself as “a local, sustainable noshery,” starts its food waste reduction right where the food is grown. “We have individual conversations with our farmers about what they want to grow and market, and how we can help them make use of abundant harvests, so field waste can be avoided,” says John Pullis, Common Roots’ executive director. “The culinary staff is willing to buy foods that might not always be the prettiest, but because they haven’t been bred for long trips across the country, they make up for in taste what they lack in beauty.”

Managing a higher-cost inventory

With more than 85% of its products designated as local and/or organic, Common Roots’ food costs are a significant expense. “We pay an average of 35% more than the commodity market, so it’s a challenge to create dishes with a value proposition in line with other restaurants in the area,” Pullis says. “When ingredients cost as much as ours, we are scrupulous about using every bit of the food we buy.” The restaurant keeps a tight inventory, writes daily prep lists, and never preps more than a couple days’ worth of ingredients at a time. “It requires more labor, but the trade-off is that it helps us manage product and reduce waste,” he says. When waste does happen, Common Roots has a plan in place: “We compost everything, including scrapings from customers’ plates.”

But even with all these well-intentioned actions, Pullis understands the true bottom line: “If the food weren’t delicious, all this would be irrelevant. Customers do appreciate our story when they hear it, but they keep coming back for the great food.”

Read more

New Yorker profile on chef Dan Barber’s pop-up restaurant WastED
From Eater: How Food Waste Ended Up on Restaurant Menus
USDA’s national food waste reduction goal

Recipes

Check out these recipes for waste-conscious offerings that easily mask your vegetable imperfections:

Grilled Vegetable and Cheese Sandwich
Balsamic Roasted Root Vegetables
Cold Cucumber Dill Soup 

Resources

Common Roots Café

When the creative team behind Wise Acre Eatery says that they’re a “farm-to-fork café,” they’ve got just one farm in mind. The majority of food served at the Minneapolis restaurant comes from a single location, owner Tangletown Gardens’ 100-acre farm in Plato, Minnesota. Although Beth Fisher, co-creative and chef, uses animal protein on her menu, her center-of-plate star is often an alternative protein such as farm-grown beans or legumes paired with fresh produce grown year-round in the farm’s greenhouses and fields.

Weekday flexitarians

“We always have lots of alternative protein choices on the menu,” Fisher says. “Right now we’re serving butternut squash steak with red bean gravy and roasted winter vegetable lasagna with local sheep’s milk cheese, for example.” While the restaurant has become known as a welcoming spot for those with dietary restrictions, Wise Acre’s co-creative and General Manager, Caroline Glawe, has been noticing a more flexitarian trend. “We sell a lot more alternative protein or veggie-centric meals on weeknights, and find that people will splurge on animal protein on Friday or Saturday,” she says.

While Fisher acknowledges that the vegetarian entrée usually lags behind animal protein choices in the restaurant’s sales, she plans to stick with the menu ratio she has in place. “Vegetarian and vegan choices will always be on the menu, and I’ll devote creative care to developing them,” she says. “Then, when someone takes a chance and tries one, it will blow them away and they’re going to come back for more.”

Farmer Dean goes vegan

Based on their experience, the non-meat trend is certainly growing. And it’s even reached as far as rural Plato. Glawe reports that Dean Engelmann, one of the farm’s owners, has recently lost 25 pounds by following a vegan diet. “Dean’s embrace of a vegan lifestyle reflects the larger food-culture connection,” she says. “We’re becoming increasingly aware that food is more than fuel — it affects who we are, how we interact with each other and how our bodies move through our environment.”

Read more

Vegetarian inspiration from California’s Tassajara Zen retreat

Recipes

Veggie Burger
Macaroni and Cheese
Balsamic Ginger Soba Noodles