The Hidden Cost Your Team Can Eliminate

This article addresses how restaurants can better manage food waste to reduce their environmental impact, please customers and boost their bottom line. Our food waste management approach produces a solid foundation, clear data, shared awareness within the team, and a concrete action plan ready to be implemented. 

Tucked into a beautiful pocket of Switzerland, in the area around Lake Geneva known as the Swiss Riviera, is a restaurant serving just 120 covers a day. Small scale but big food losses. The equivalent of 41 meals were being disposed of every single day, some CHF 450 squandered daily or 129,600 Swiss francs per year. And yet, this establishment thought it was attentive to food waste.

Food waste is one of the most visible yet most overlooked challenges in hospitality. Visible, because it happens in every kitchen, every service, every day. Overlooked, because without measurement, it never appears on the balance sheet. And you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

In our observations, we focused on the moment a team moves from seeing the data to wanting to act on it. Acutely aware of sustainability issues, the staff in this Swiss restaurant shifted their readiness to act from 62% to 100% once they were cognizant of the numbers. This readiness was measured through a pre- and post-intervention questionnaire administered to the entire staff, including management. The owner (an EHL alumnus), the chef, and the director were all very engaged in the project; when people understand the problem, they want to fix it. The goal of the intervention was clear:  how to change staff behavior and make food waste visible and hence tangible for all.  

Food Costs Hiding in Plain Sight

According to a conservative estimate by GastroSuisse (2021), every kilo thrown away represents an average loss of CHF 24. The real figure is likely much higher.

The numbers themselves are jaw-dropping but the gap between perception and reality is also impressive. The restaurant we observed was genuinely committed to the environment. Its seasonal menu favored local produce and the owner was conscious about restaurant sustainability. And yet, when food waste was first measured, the data told a different story. To put it in perspective, Swiss national benchmarks set the best practice at less than 45 grams of avoidable waste per cover (ZHAW & United Against Waste, 2024). This restaurant was operating at more than three times that level.

People at the Heart of Change

The fieldwork provided the restaurant with valuable primary data, but enhancing stakeholder buy-in was even more crucial. Automated tracking tools exist and have their value, particularly for large operations that need continuous monitoring. Whatever the tool, the data still needs to be analyzsed, shared with the team and translated into concrete action. That human step cannot be automated. There is also something intentional and tangible in asking staff to weigh and record the waste themselves; that simple act creates a direct, physical connection to the problem.

It was quickly observed that the moment waste becomes physically concrete and measurable, something shifts. Staff start making connections between their daily actions and what ends up in the bin. The solution is ready; people just need to use it. One of the goals of this intervention was to create the conditions for an honest conversation, a space where people feel safe enough to recognize the issue and make changes themselves. This is exactly what happened at the experimental restaurant.

A Simple, Transferable Method

We designed our food waste management approach, which can be summed up as Measure, Convince, Change, to be simple enough to work anywhere, regardless of size or budget. It is built around four steps: a questionnaire, a weighing protocol, a collective workshop and a follow-up system. It begins with measurements carried out over several weeks, distinguishing avoidable waste (i.e., food that could have been used differently) from the unavoidable (e.g., coffee grounds, bones, peels, etc.). A before and after questionnaire distributed to staff captured the human baseline alongside the quantitative one.

The workshop in particular is where the data comes alive. Management and staff came together to look at the same numbers and build a shared commitment to act. Causes are discussed openly, measures decided together and everyone leaves with a sense of ownership. Decisions made collectively are far more likely to be implemented than those handed down from above.

The measures themselves depend on the context of each establishment. Some are simple and immediate. In the restaurant we studied, the team decided collectively to reduce bread service from five baguettes to three, reusing leftover bread as tapas. By the very next day, there was zero bread waste. Others require deeper commitment, like switching to daily ordering and fundamentally rethinking supply chain management to reduce inventories and improve planning. Both quick wins and structural changes emerged from the same workshop.

Restaurant Sustainability Makes Cents

The cost of implementing the method, by comparison, is almost nothing: a kitchen scale, a spreadsheet, an awareness-building strategy, a regular presence on the ground and a structured follow-up. From 2024 to 2026, EHL’s 1893 restaurant reduced food waste by 40%, saving tens of thousands of francs annually in the process. Sustainability makes good financial sense, as exemplified by the restaurant we studied where an estimated 129,600 Swiss francs per year were saved.

Food waste reduction is also useful in ESG reporting where the data collected (e.g., grams per cover, waste evolution over time, etc.) help restaurants earn certifications. These include Green Key and/or EarthCheck, both of which require documented actions and evidence of continuous improvement over time.

Beyond Waste

In addition to reducing waste, cost savings and green certifications, these efforts signal to guests that valuable resources are not being squandered. Sustainability and excellence can indeed go hand in hand.
Any restaurant willing to look honestly at what ends up in the bin can begin today. The scale is already in your kitchen. The willingness to get started is all it takes to effect meaningful change.

Reference

GastroSuisse (2021). Food waste economic losses study. Retrieved from: www.gastrosuisse.ch

FOEN (2019). Food losses in Switzerland: Environmental impact and mitigation potential. Federal Office for the Environment. Retrieved from: www.bafu.admin.ch/en/food-waste

ZHAW & United Against Waste (2024). Guide sectoriel : Réduction du gaspillage alimentaire dans la restauration.

FAO/UNEP/UNFCCC (2024). Food waste and greenhouse gas emissions. United Nations.

Source: View the original article at EHL.