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128 • FOODSERVICE EQUIPMENT & SUPPLIES • MAY 2015 green tip Tracking Tales Three Green Practices Foodservice Operators Should Implement Right Now By Amelia Levin, Contributing Editor A s sustainability becomes more mainstream for businesses of all types, the many ways to "go green" can overwhelm foodservice operators in all segments. By now we all know energy, water, waste and menu management not only save costs, but also help preserve precious resources. So what are some easy frst steps to take in these areas? FE&S; caught up with sustainability guru and former Yale University execu- tive chef John Turenne, FCSI, founder and president of Sustain- able Food Systems, for his thoughts, along with a couple of operators who offered their suggestions for best green practices they would encourage others to implement. The consensus: tracking, simply put, is an important frst step for better business visibility and sets the groundwork for a more advanced sustainable program. 1. TRACK FOOD PRODUCTION When it comes to waste management, tracking both production and waste by weight can help reduce "upstream" costs associated with too much food. Tracking food production in particular costs little to nothing, save for a little extra time, and it's well worth it in the end, according to Turenne. With all the software and spreadsheet tools on the market these days, that task keeps getting easier for chefs and foodservice managers. No need to fear that you're going to run out of food. "Monitoring upstream waste helps cut back on pesticide use, water consumption and fuel consumption just in the ag- riculture process alone," says Turenne. "We're ordering less food and products that we would have thrown away because we're producing less or producing just the right amount." Turenne also points out the social ramifcations of over- production. From a moral standpoint, how can a business throw so much food away when hundreds of thousands of Americans go hungry each day? Financially speaking, rightsizing produc- tion needs means more cost reductions in food purchases and waste hauling, including compost hauling, which can run much higher in price. And don't forget to factor in the back-end savings of energy, water and labor costs associated with the reduction of extra food prep, warewashing and cooking. "Waste in a kitchen really impacts so many other areas in terms of sustainability," says Turenne. Fancy tools aside, it takes nothing more than a paper, pencil and some math to maintain good food production records and determine how much food to produce to avoid overproduction, the number-one culprit of food waste. "Let's say you serve a hearty stew along with three or four other items and happen to have served 100 people for that meal period," Turenne ex- plains. "When the meal period is over, you sit down and track how many por- tions you actually served. That number of portions divided by the total number of customers fed gives you an acceptability percentage." By calculating an acceptability percentage for each menu item, it's easy to forecast how much of the particular dish to prepare, taking into consideration any extraneous situations like events or weather that may bring in more or fewer customers. 2. TRACK FOOD WASTE While many noncommercial foodservice operators have maintained these records for years, commercial operators can easily adopt the same practice as well, swapping out meal periods for peak dayparts and working with core menu items that change less frequently.