TIL the average restaurant throws out 4 to 10 percent of the food it buys before it ever hits a plate

Wendy Park · 2026-10-12T01:10:03.79323+00:00

I read this in a report from a food waste group out of Boston last week and it stopped me cold. That number sounds small until you do the math on a busy Friday. If my kitchen rings up $6,000 in food sales that night, I'm basically tossing $300 to $600 in the trash. Some of that is trim and scraps, sure, but a lot of it is stuff that sat too long in the walk-in because we over ordered. I walked my cooler after close and found two cases of romaine going brown and a flat of salmon I forgot we had. So here is my take: most of us blame portioning or picky customers, but the real leak is ordering on habit instead of counting what is actually left. Anybody here actually track their waste week to week, and what did it cost you to start?

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TIL the average restaurant throws out 4 to 10 percent of the food it buys before it ever hits a plate | Chefs - nhfree.com