Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.
Issue link: https://specialtyfoodmagazine.epubxp.com/i/328566
Joe Appel: We have always operated in a full-cycle system, starting with our perishable items on display for sale. We focus on absolute freshness, so when something on display begins to show signs of being less than perfect visually, we move that item to our pro- duction kitchen for use in our prepared foods, soups, sandwiches, et cetera. The very small number of items that end up being unusable, we compost. All of our retail locations and our production kitchen compost all food waste, though there's not much of that. Also, we use everything. We practice whole-animal butchery, receiving animals straight from the people who raised them. We use every last bit of the animals for retail sale, for use in our pate and sausage program and in prepared foods. Any fish we don't sell goes into our fishcakes, which go for sale in our freezer. And so on. We control both quality and quantity by maintaining close partnerships with our producers, Portland's composting program Garbage to Garden, and others. All of these practices help us keep costs low, while reducing or eliminating waste. Rudy Chavez: Our first line of defense in reducing waste is effec- tive ordering. We keep our ordering tight and get the most turns from our inventory as is possible. In some departments, like produce, we may experience some slightly blemished items and are able turn them into a fresh juice in our juice bar, pies in our in-store bakery, or a chef's special in our deli. Either way, these items are identified and used quickly, and waste is reduced and turned into sales. Jon Pruden: At Taste, we start out by training new employees about the financial effects waste has on the company as well as employee pay and benefits. To underscore the point, we post signs in the back of the house showing the expense of over-portioning certain menu items over a year's time. Waste, samples, and products used in service (like bottles of wine used for by-the-glass pours) are all accounted for through our point-of-sale system, and we have strict rules in place that no product gets consumed or leaves our premises without payment. This applies to us as the owners, who lead by example by paying for our own purchases at the counter. Still, while we do a great job accounting for inventory and waste, we have room for improvement in actually culling the data and making operational refinements to reduce it. Suzy Thompson: When we have constant waste from a product, we make the tough decision to discontinue it. It can be hard. We are a cheese shop but we simply cannot move ricotta, and we don't have much of a use for it in our kitchen. It can be hard telling people we don't carry it—and we still try to bring it in from time to time—but we throw away five from a case of six all the time. As far as moving cheeses, if they are alpine or something close to it, they get thrown in the grilled cheese mix. If we have a lot of something that's wonderful, it gets in the Cheese of the Month bags. Fortunately we carry only products we can truly get excited about, so a hard push on a cheese is never a stretch for us. We get competi- tive with each other about moving a cheese that needs to move right now. We have a light-lunch counter and we often put things to use there. We have a running joke: "Can you put this on a sandwich?" any time any product hits its date. Also, I've had to discipline myself to not keep bringing in a product that I want but no one else is inter- ested in. If the world refuses to understand its glory, there's only so much I can do about it. We used to sell a small amount of produce, but it didn't sell well, and it confused people about what our emphasis is, which is cheese. We still get produce because we use it in our kitchen, but it now resides in our walk-in, out of sight from the customer. That was somewhat counterintuitive to me: if we had it, it made sense to try to move it and have an added convenience for our customers, but it just doesn't work that way. David Warner: At City Feed and Supply, we separate com- postables, mixed recyclables, paper recyclables, and dumpster refuse every day in order to limit to the barest minimum what ends up in the landfill. It is only a matter of time before these practices will be mandated by local government, so it is good to be ahead of the curve. And our customers like to see that we are doing this, so there is a marketing benefit as well. "We use every last bit of the animals for retail sale, for use in our pate and sausage program and in prepared foods. Any fsh we don't sell goes into our fshcakes, which go for sale in our freezer. And so on." Eva Meszaros is managing editor of Specialty Food Magazine. "We train new employees about the fnancial efects waste has on the company. To underscore the point, we post signs in the back of the house showing the expense of over-portioning certain menu items over a year's time." 128 ❘ SPECIALTY FOOD MAGAZINE specialtyfood.com retailTherapy_SUMMER14.indd 128 6/5/14 8:57 AM