Zero Waste Kitchen Initiative Confronts Food Waste
2 Min Read By MRM Staff
An estimated 70 billion pounds of food is wasted a year.
That bears repeating.
An estimated 70 billion pounds of food is wasted a year.
A new initiative, Zero Waste Kitchen, aims to confront the issue by bringing awareness to sustainability practices in restaurants.
The effort was launched this week by restaurant technology provider BlueCart who conducted a survey revealing that when restaurants switched from traditional ordering methods to online and mobile ordering via the application, they cut their food waste by 52 percent. In addition, using the platform reduces the carbon footprint by eliminating paper from thousands of transactions.
Since stumbling upon the information, BlueCart made a commitment to support sustainability practices within the food industry through Zero Waste Kitchen, which was designed to share chef’s best composting strategies and other sustainable practices in hopes of enlightening the greater chef community and preventing food waste before it even starts.
Throughout this two-month journey, the purchasing practices of three chefs will be shared, as will improvement in their individual sustainability scores. The score represents an aggregate performance of composting, having a food recovery program, minimizing the carbon footprint, and designing and implementing new food waste mitigation strategies.
The Zero Waste Kitchen chef roster consists of Jehangir Mehta, Tanya Holland, and Tim Ma. Jehangir is a former Iron Chef runner up and the Owner/Chef of Graffiti in New York City. Holland was featured on The Food Network, VH1, The Today Show, and owns Brown Sugar Kitchen, located in the greater San Francisco area. Former electrical engineer Ma pursed his passion and recently opened Kyirisan in Washington, D.C.
Themes
Week One: Interviews with chefs start
Week Two: Team and Culture. See how Zero Waste Kitchen chef moguls thrive with their team and culture
Week Three: Food Recovery, Food Composting
Week Four: Product Sourcing and potential supplier’s interview. Chefs talk suppliers and best practices to preserve those relationships.
Week Five: Tech in the Restaurant and Food. Explore what Zero Waste Kitchen chefs say about tech in their restaurants.
Week Six: Time Management and Productivity. The most time consuming practices in the kitchen and solutions to cutting time.
Week Seven: Inventory Management. Discover how Zero Waste Kitchen chefs maintain their inventory levels with finesse.
Week Eight: Live Twitter Discussion moderated by Food+Tech Connect.
Follow along to be part of the conversation: https://www.bluecart.com/zwk.html. Use the hashtag #zerowastekitchen.
BlueCart, a venture capital funded restaurant technology provider with offices in Washington D.C., New York, and San Francisco and more than 23,000 businesses on its platform, is joining forces with food industry partners such as Food + Tech Connect, Entrepreneurial Chef Magazine, Aspire, 7Shifts and Modern Restaurant Management magazine to help chefs today become better sustainability leaders of tomorrow.