How to Track Food Waste in a Restaurant: The Waste Log, the Cost and What to Change

Waste never appears as its own line on a P&L. It sits inside food cost, mixed with over-portioning, comps and counting errors, which is why a kitchen can know its food cost to the decimal and still not know what it throws away. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency puts the order plainly: "The first step in reducing wasted food is to measure it."

Set up the log

1. 1.Put a scale and a sheet wherever food gets thrown out: the prep station, the line, the walk-in and the dish pit. A portion scale is enough; weigh in a container and subtract the container.
2. 2.Record five things per discard: date, item, quantity (weight, or a count for portioned items), reason and initials. Leave the cost column for the manager, so nobody on the line has to look up a price.
3. 3.Use a fixed list of reasons and nothing else: spoiled, overproduced, prep error, cook error, returned. A free-text reason cannot be totaled.
4. 4.Log before it goes in the bin. An entry written at the end of the shift is an estimate.
5. 5.Run it daily for two weeks. EPA's tracking tool for food service asks for "a minimum of two weeks of daily tracking by staff and weekly data entry for best results" — long enough to see each day of the week twice.

Two things stay off the cost total. Expected trim is already in your recipe yields, so log trim only when it goes beyond the spec; the produce yield chart and the cooking yield guide show what the spec should be. Plate waste — what guests leave — was sold, so its cost is already matched to a sale. Weigh it if you want to know which dishes come back half-eaten, but keep it out of the waste total.

Cost each line at what you paid

The soup is priced per quart from its batch recipe — everything in the pot, not just the tomatoes — and the returned sandwich at its full plate cost, because every component went in the bin. The recipe costing guide shows how to cost a batch.

Read it by reason, then change one thing

Start with the biggest dollar reason, not the most frequent entry. In the example, spoilage is almost half the total ($412 of $880). Sort its lines by item: if two or three items carry most of the dollars, those are the pars to change first, and the inventory turnover guide shows how many days of each you are holding.

Then run the log again for two weeks and compare the dollars by reason. That tells you whether the change worked; food cost alone cannot, because it also moves with prices and with what sold.

What measurements say about where restaurant waste comes from

Published figures are thinner than they look. The headline U.S. numbers are modeled: ReFED estimates that "nearly 70% of the total surplus came from plate waste" across U.S. restaurants and foodservice in 2024, but its methodology takes plate waste rates from a few studies used as proxies, and kitchen waste from a software vendor whose "current client base does not include restaurants."

The measured breakdown above comes from the UK charity WRAP, which sorted each site's waste into spoilage, preparation and plate bins for a day. Its preparation share includes unavoidable waste such as bones and peel, and WRAP calls the results "indicative of the kitchen types observed and are only estimates due to the sample size." The pattern is the useful part: where a kitchen does more of its own prep, more of its waste arises in prep. Your own two weeks of logging will say more about your kitchen than any of these.

What to do with food you cannot sell

EPA's Wasted Food Scale ranks the options, "arranged in order from most preferred on the top left to least preferred on the top right": prevent wasted food first; then donate or upcycle; feed animals; compost, or anaerobic digestion with beneficial use of the digestate; and landfill, incineration or the drain last. "Within a given tier, pathways are ranked equally," and the scale "does not consider economic and social factors."

Donated food carries federal liability protection. The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act protects donors from civil and criminal liability "arising from the nature, age, packaging, or condition" of apparently wholesome food donated in good faith to a nonprofit for distribution to people in need, and since a January 2023 amendment it also protects a "qualified direct donor" — a term that includes a restaurant or caterer — giving food directly to a needy individual at zero cost. The protection does not reach "gross negligence or intentional misconduct," and it does not override state or local health rules (42 U.S.C. §1791).

Food donated from a business can also qualify for a special tax deduction for food inventory, limited to 15% of net income from the businesses that made the donations (for a C corporation, 15% of taxable income), with a five-year carryover (26 U.S.C. §170(e)(3)(C)); IRS Publication 526 covers the records. Ask your accountant before counting on it.

New York City's organics rules

DSNY's commercial organics requirements already cover food service establishments with at least 7,000 square feet (or 8,000 square feet combined with the other food services in the same building or location), chains of two or more city locations with at least 8,000 square feet combined, and food service in hotels with 100 or more rooms. Covered businesses separate "staff-handled, back of house organic waste" — food scraps, food-soiled paper and certified compostable products — into labeled containers, post instructions for employees, and use a private carter, haul it themselves with a Business Integrity Commission registration, or process it on site in an in-vessel system. "A food waste grinder is not permitted."

Local Law 118 of 2026, passed by the Council on June 30 and returned unsigned by the mayor on July 31, drops the size tests: once it takes effect, 120 days after it became law, a covered establishment includes "any food service establishment." It requires DSNY to "designate additional covered establishments by December 1, 2026," and those designated must comply "beginning on June 1, 2027, or on the final implementation date of the commercial waste zone in which such designated covered establishment is located, whichever is later." DSNY sets by rule which establishments it designates, so check its page for the current list before planning around a date.

Outside the city, New York State's food donation and food scraps recycling law covers businesses that generate an annual average of two tons of wasted food a week or more — one ton from 2027 and half a ton from 2029. They must donate excess edible food, and must recycle the remaining food scraps if they are within 25 miles of an organics recycler (50 miles from 2027). The law "does NOT include" New York City, which has its own law (NYSDEC). Either way, the same weights that cost your waste tell you how much organic material a separation program will have to handle.

Marji does not keep a waste log. It keeps the cost side — ingredient prices from your supplier invoices and each dish's plate cost — which is what turns a logged discard into dollars.