Let’s Put a Stop to Food Waste
At Smart Restaurants we strongly believe that there needs to be something done to reduce that amount of food and drink we waste each year. The UK as a whole wastes millions of tonnes of food and drink every year, which is far more than any other country in Europe. There are many factors which contribute towards food waste. Many of us feel the need to stick to the best before date, throwing away food and drink produce which only be a day out of date. Most of the time this will still be okay to eat, so unless it looks or smells gone off you should always try to use up the food you buy instead of throwing it away. If you have bought too much and you feel you may not be able to eat something before the best before date then there is always the option to freeze the food and use within the allowance that you are able to eat it within for example within the month.
Food Waste in Restaurants and Takeaways
Most food waste comes from households. A lot of the time offers in supermarkets will entice customers into buying more than they need to. For example if bread is £2.59 or two loaves for £3 then naturally you would pick up two. However what usually happens is that only the one loaf has been used up and the other one gets put into food waste which is money spent on something that has only gone in the bin and contributed to the overall amount of food we waste as a country each year.
Although the amount of food restaurants and takeaways waste is considerably low compared to the amount households waste, restaurants and takeaways still contribute to that amount by wasting over 600,000 tonnes of food each year. More restaurants need to give customers the option to take leftover food home with them. Many restaurants offer this service, but a lot of the time the customer does not want to walk out with a ‘doggy bag’. However there is nothing wrong with this, after all you have paid for the food so you might as well take home any leftovers which could do to take to work for lunch the next day.
Restaurants also end up wasting much of the food which has been used in preparation along with food they have leftover such as pasta sauces and meals that cannot be used the next day such as rice dishes or meat which should be eaten on the day that it has been cooked. Many buffet style restaurants are faced with the issue of leftover food which is usually wasted so this is where the Too Good To Go App is here to help.
The Too Good To Go App
Entrepreneurs Chris Wilson and Jamie Crummie have put together the perfect idea of a way to eliminate food waste and help restaurants make more money on the food which would of only been thrown away by creating an App to allow customers to buy the food destined for the bin at a bargain price.
This year the Too Good To Go App has been released in the UK to help tackle food waste made up from restaurants and is now even running across London. The idea of the App is to allow customers to purchase meals from various restaurants at a percentage of what it would of cost to sit down and eat the meal at the restaurant itself. Prices range from around £2 – £3.80 for a good quality meal. Both the customer and the restaurant benefit from this, the customer is able to buy a tasty meal at a fraction of the cost that it should be and then the restaurant makes money on food which would of only been thrown away, contributing to the food waste issue. Customers can pay for the food through the App and then they can collect the food at a specific time slot which would be usually after lunch or just before the restaurant closes.
Too Good To Go is available as an App for both iOS and Android and can also be used online where customers can view restaurants located near them on the map. You can sign up to Too Good To Go, search for restaurants near your location, pay the price that they are offering for example £3.50 and then you go to the restaurant at a specific collection time, collect an eco-friendly takeaway box and fill it up with the food you wish to take away. It is up to you if you would like to have it as a meal for that evening or whether you want to save it for the next day. Whatever you choose to do, you must remember that you are helping put a stop to food waste.
Too Good To Go’s aim is to make restaurants realise how much food they were wasting and hope that this may make them reduce the amount of food that they use in preparation for the meals that they make. Although it may be time consuming, food should really be made and prepared to order. It is when meals are prepared in advance that food gets wasted. This is an issue in restaurants such as buffets and many Asian restaurants who cook large dishes with sauces and rice.
The Good To Go App is a great idea and the more restaurants that come onboard the better as this will help reduce the amount of food we waste each year.
