Using New Technologies to Address Food Waste in the Restaurant Industry
By Daniel Khachab, co-founder and CEO of Choco
In December of last year, I was fortunate to be able to attend COP28, the United Nations conference on climate change, where I listened to climate scientists, business leaders, politicians, journalists, and NGOs try to find solutions to the most urgent issue of our time: climate change. While energy dominated most of the conversation, I was heartened to hear more discussion around one of the most critical but overlooked elements of climate change: food waste.
Our food system contributes 24% of all greenhouse gas emissions, second only to those from electricity. By comparison, transportation accounts for only 14% of greenhouse gas, and a large percentage of that transportation is used to move food.
The food waste problem is particularly pronounced in the restaurant industry, where nearly 15% of unused food is recycled or donated, meaning that fully 85% is simply thrown away. This contributes to this staggering figure: 40% of all food produced worldwide goes to waste, which means that nearly 10% of global greenhouse gases could be cut overnight if we just changed our behavior and improved the global food supply chain.
The root causes of our dysfunctional supply chain
Our food system is the world’s most complicated jigsaw puzzle, connecting 540 million farms to 8 billion consumers. The average lunch in New York or LA, London or Shanghai might feature quinoa from Paraguay, avocado from Mexico, chickpeas from India, salmon from Scandinavia or beef from Argentina, all cooked with oil from Ukrainian sunflowers and salt from Nepal. These products take complex and inefficient routes, changing hands an average of nine times before they arrive in front of the consumer. The scale is mind-boggling: 500,000 different products from trillions of tons of harvests, all transported across continents. The whole thing is a fragmented maze, a disorganized Frankenstein, held together by millions of quick fixes and spot solutions.
Creating a globally connected digital food system
To comprehensively address these challenges we need to create coherence and collaboration at each level, from farmers and buyers to wholesalers, distributors, brokers, restaurant owners and beyond. Every value-adding business within the food supply chain needs to embrace technology that facilitates waste reduction and cost efficiency through process automation. Transformative measures should extend from leveraging data and AI to revamping back-of-house operations for suppliers, including warehousing, inbound operations, and purchasing.
Happily, there have been a number of new technologies launched in recent years that can help restaurant owners be part of this digital approach to reducing food waste. Several companies offer automated inventory management systems which can help restaurants minimize food loss and waste through more accurate demand forecasting and real-time monitoring of stock levels. When it comes to time to place an order, tools like Choco enable restaurants to streamline the process and avoid the kinds of errors and duplicate orders that lead to waste.
Similarly, tableside and self-ordering technology can help restaurants avoid mistakes that lead to wasted food. New entrants can also help restaurants avoid sending surplus food to landfill. Copia uses an algorithm to match excess food from restaurants and other hospitality businesses with local non-profits and even arrange to have a third-party driver pick it up, while Too Good To Go has created a mobile app that allows consumers to buy leftover, expiring, or misshapen food at discount prices from local eateries.
Looking towards the future
I’m sure many will find this vision grandiose or even impossible. But the truth is that this is a problem that urgently needs to be solved – both because of the challenges we’re already facing as a result of climate change and also because our food system will have to feed a population of 10 billion by 2050. There is a limit to how much we can expand agricultural land, which means that reducing food waste is imperative.
There is also a strong economic incentive. Recent data found that a 20% reduction in food waste in the restaurant industry could save businesses up to $7 billion annually. And increasingly, there are reputational and competitive reasons for getting food waste under control. According to a 2022 survey of global consumers, 68% of people believe that restaurants should have processes in place to avoid waste and 43% would pay more for takeout food that was sustainable.
The message is clear. As business leaders, food suppliers, restaurant owners, chefs, or simply consumers, we are all part of the ecosystem and we all have a role to play in cutting down food waste. It’s not just an environmental crusade, it’s smart business as well as an urgent humanitarian need. We can turn this crisis into an opportunity for lasting change. Let’s make the future of food a sustainable one, starting today.
