News catering industry
'Being aware of waste yields a lot of money'
The Together Against Food Waste Foundation and Rabobank are organizing the 'Food Waste Challenge' again this year. With this challenge, catering companies must become aware of how much they waste on an annual basis. "If you are aware of what you are wasting, it can yield a lot of money at the bottom," says Jos Klerx, sector specialist Horeca and Recreation at Rabobank, during the online Horecava.
"The Food Waste Challenge challenges us to waste less food. The catering industry wastes 14% of the total. This amounts to approximately €600 million in total," says Klerx. "Companies can use that money better, especially after the corona crisis, so we want to help entrepreneurs look for new perspectives and solutions." Klerx tells us that ex-participants at the bottom of the line easily saved €15.000 to €20.000 by being more aware of food waste.
The Waste Watchers company therefore looks theoretically at where profit can be made. "We ask participants to fill in their food waste of one particular week in an online environment. How do we do that? Well, very simple. We ask them to literally look in the trash. With transparent garbage bags you can literally see what you have and you can well ask yourself whether you can do something else with certain residual flows," says Thomas Luttikhol of Waste Watchers.
Thinking in solutions
Event Hotels is one of the participants that took part in the Food Waste Challenge last year. "We didn't literally look in the trash can, but bought a green and a white trash can. Everything that is edible went into the white trash and everything that is not edible went into the green trash. We'll have this at the end of the week weighed," says Marlou van der Burgt. "And I have to say, we were quite shocked by what we saw." For Van der Burgt it was an extra motivation to reduce the number of kilos. "We set up an internal competition to see who could achieve the largest reduction in food waste. That way you also increase involvement."
"We also looked at which guests stay in our hotels on which days. The guests who stayed with us during the weekend turned out to have different preferences than those who stayed with us during the week. We eventually adapted our buffet and menu to that." , explains Van der Burgt. Klerx states that this is indeed one of the first solutions in the fight against food waste from the catering industry. "You see in many restaurants that the side dishes are not eaten. Perhaps you should first ask whether a consumer really needs it."
Klerx states that the latter can also contribute to the positive feeling that the guest must have left after his visit. "After all, if you are served too much food, you won't finish it. For many guests it is annoying to return food and so they have a negative experience with their visit," explains Klerx.
Start delayed
Now that catering establishments are still closed at the moment, it is not possible to start the challenge. "If the catering industry is allowed to open again, we will give entrepreneurs time to sort out their affairs and after that we actually want to start as soon as possible. You can of course think about it," says Klerx. He notices that there is increasing enthusiasm for the program. "That is why we are thinking about doing things differently this year. Instead of looking at the whole of the Netherlands in one go, we want to look at regions. Think of a collaboration with the municipality of The Hague or possibly a collaboration with a certain group. intensify supervision."
Kimberly Baker
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