Counting the Cost of Waste in Holiday Catering

In catering, as is the case in any other business sector, being resourceful has its own rewards. Wastefulness is never a positive attribute, but catering is an area offering particular rewards for companies that take the time to ensure their practices minimize waste and make the best possible use of the resources at their disposal.

For caterers based in hotels and holiday resorts, keeping on the ball in terms of waste is especially important. Holidaymakers tend to indulge themselves never more so than when eating and drinking so those preparing and serving meals need to ensure that they are the ones taking the responsibility to make the difference in limiting waste.

What is waste?

As a starting point, it is perhaps best to examine what is meant by the term 'waste'. It probably immediately conjures up images of food waste, and this is of course one of the main ways in which caterers blow their money. Through buying too many ingredients, serving needlessly oversized portions that diners rarely finish, and storing food inappropriately, caterers often fall into the trap of wasting food resources.

Waste in the kitchen doesn't begin and end with food, however. Bulky, non-recyclable items can take up room in the kitchen, and be awkward and costly to get rid of. Disposable, single-use items like plastic cutlery and paper plates also become waste products after they are used.

Caterers should also consider waste of labor are employees spending too much time carrying out manual processes that could be done by a machine? When chefs find themselves needing to wash up as they go along, managers should consider whether better facilities could allow catering staff to maximize the time they spend preparing and serving food.

How can holiday caterers reduce waste?

First, let's look at food. As a hungry diner on holiday, there is nothing worse than paying good money for a disappointingly small portion of food, but some caterers go too far to the other extreme. If your waiters regularly find themselves taking back plates still half-full with food, perhaps you are serving more than your customers want or need.

Possibly the only thing worse than too much food on the plate is too much in the trashcan. With meat in particular, remember that bones, carcasses, and fat trimmings still have flavor and uses in food preparation. Use them in stocks, stews, and soups, and consider what meals you could create from the bits and pieces left on the chopping board. Also make sure you are regularly checking the temperature in the kitchen, as well as monitoring how well your refrigerators, cupboards, and other storage facilities are functioning.

Elsewhere, try to cut down on disposables where you can. You may find that good quality kitchenware, while more expensive as a one-off purchase, pays for itself in the long run.

Your company is sure to gain an excellent reputation if it is able to adopt and maintain a 'zero waste' policy, meaning that products are reused or recycled wherever possible, and the amount of output that ends up in landfills is minimal. If the approval of your customers does not speak for itself, the money saved through cutting waste dramatically certainly will.

The hidden costs of waste in holiday catering

There is a very simple cycle to remember if waste management procedures are not in operation:

1. Waste costs caterers money
2. The shortfall in profit this could lead to is likely to result in food prices, and consequentially hotel rooms and package holiday prices, becoming more expensive
3. Fewer holidaymakers are prepared to shell out the additional dollars to stay with you
4. A disappointing holiday season awaits!

It really can't be stressed enough how important it is to stay on the ball in waste reduction, so start putting procedures in place today if you haven't already. Besides the crucial element of costs, all caterers worth their salt hate to see food and resources wasted, and it should really become second nature to be waste-conscious for the sake of both the caterer's bank balance and the environment.

Bio:
Norman James works for Alliance Online, which is one of the UK's leading suppliers to the leisure, catering, and healthcare industries. The company's clients range from household name hotels to up-and-coming trendy bars and luxury gyms. With over 18,000 products available, commercial catering firms can source their supplies from a trustworthy source. As well as taking its own environmental responsibilities very seriously, the company offers a range of biodegradable catering supplies, such as foam plates and refuse sacks, on its website: www.allianceonline.co.uk

Food Suppliers and the Catering Trade - Learning to Manage a Kitchen Order

The catering trade isn't easy to run. It's based on an element of unpredictability, and constantly battles with itself to balance the need to have as much food as its guests want, with the requirement not to order too much.

It takes a while to get used to the routines of food ordering. The novice manager isn't helped by the fact that different owners have different ways of doing things. Some prefer to keep their stocks on the dangerous side of low, stating that they would rather run out of items and take them off the menu until the food suppliers next visit: while others can't abide the idea that a customer could order something from the menu that isn't available anymore.

The two points of view are represented, in one way or another, across the board of catering establishments and hospitality industry locations.

The first point of view is not just financially motivated. It is, of course, true that you can't lose money on food if you are selling more than you order; or, rather, that you can't ever waste money by throwing food away, if you order less than you need. However, there's a second element to this ordering model.

A restaurant or bar that runs out of a popular dish may, within reason, create and reinforce a reputation for itself as a popular place to eat - and for those dishes it runs out of as so popular it cannot keep up with demand. As long as the speed with which a certain dish sells out is not ludicrous, and as long as guests are able to order the majority of dishes on menu for most of the time, then the catering establishment that sometimes drops stock levels creates an atmosphere of exclusivity that is hard to develop in other ways.

At the other end of the spectrum, the second point of view holds that no restaurant or bar should ever find itself in a position where it has to deny a customer the food he or she has chosen from the menu. Again, there's more going on here than at first meets the eye - some subtleties that must be weighed in the accounts before this approach can be seen to bear fruit.

The first and most cautionary note to sound here is that of overstocking. Overstocking on food is the nightmare of every kitchen or establishment manager. If you have to throw away what you ordered, you can't sell it and make a profit - and you can't recoup the original cost of ordering it either.

Every establishment will, at some point, have to throw away food it has ordered. This is the nature of the business and is true even of food that can be frozen. The trick, for the business keen always to have the full menu in operation, is to ensure that wastage happens only very infrequently. In order to make that assurance, it becomes necessary to develop a solid understanding of the patterns that affect the restaurant trade.

Seasonal patterns allow some restaurant managers to work out when they are likely to need their largest and smallest orders - big in July and August, for example, and small in February. There's nothing like hands-on experience to back this up. Judging current trade patterns on top of known seasonal patterns allows the manager to make informed choices.

Eva Holmes is a former catering manager. She now advises food suppliers on their stock management procedures.

Indonesian Food Health Benefits

There are many beautiful aspects of Asian culture we admire and knowingly or unknowingly emulate working with them on a daily basis. There are those among the countries of Asia which are more popular than others in the west for various reasons. Sadly Indonesia is one of those that gets easily overlooked when it comes to the local culture. Most people see and think of either China, Japan, Korea and Thailand when they think of the term "Asian", however Indonesia can offer a unique and varied culture spread across over six thousand islands. Their art, martial arts such as Silat and history of piracy and naval warfare created a world where nothing is boring or mundane even to the most travel-savvy visitor. Their food is a unique and diverse combination of flavors because of the fact that the islands developed their own versions of common recipes among other things and with the abundance of seafood it also has some very nice health benefits.

The local food has many influences both from mainland Asia and the west because of its lucrative position in respect to naval trade through the centuries. A lot of the spices present in many recipes in the west have been intertwined with the local culture precisely because of that trade such as cloves and nutmeg. One of the most beautiful and healthy aspects of the local food is exactly these spices - they contain much needed protein and minerals the human body uses and on top of that they have the added bonus of tasting great.

Something else the local food uses a lot is rice and that is in abundance - the health benefits here are well-known: it stabilizes the blood sugar levels, it has plenty of vitamins B1 and D as well as many minerals, it is rich in carbohydrates, cholesterol-free and capable of helping out with many diseases by just being part of your daily diet. You can find rice in a lot of the local dishes such as nasi uduk (coconut-milk cooked rice), lontong (banana-leaf steamed rice) and of course nasi goreng which is essentially fried rice. Nasi goreng is considered the national dish of Indonesia and it combines seafood, vegetables and rice in a tasty dish.

There are a lot of fruits containing high quantities of starch in the local diet such as yams, potatoes, cassava, sweet potatoes, taro, breadfruit and jackfruit. These are truly staple foods and because of their prevalence in Indonesian cuisine the local population has a chance to eat healthy. Sadly a lot of the local population has begun emulating the western lifestyle switching from their traditional diets to fast-food restaurants and a sedentary lifestyle which we all know can lead to serious health issues.

There are some truly amazing dishes out there which also have local vegetables. Kangkung is a leaf vegetable which is known for its blood sugar lowering effects. It is used in many recipes in the local cuisine. Other examples include melinjo with its wonderful antioxidant properties. Genjer (not to be mistaken for a corruption of the word ginger) is a plant often used in combination with other plants in curry, soup and salads among other things.

Overall Indonesian food bears similarities to a lot of the mainland Asian cuisine but with its own twist. Thanks to the way the recipes are prepared this makes it healthy and good for consumption on a regular basis. As with all things however this should be taken in moderation as overeating is one of the main reasons for obesity.

This guest post has been submitted by: Vacation-Rentals

By Angela Harpert