You might notice a big 22-quart Cambro next to our sandwich station with cast-off bread inside it.  One of the things Sunny is helping us with (in addition to calculating those nutritionals some of you have been begging for) is to compare the amount of food we make with the amount of food we sell. Comparing those two will get us an idea of how much food we are wasting.

Most restaurants combat food waste by over-prepping and freezing leftover food. We have no freezers so we prep only enough food to get us through about a day and a half of service. This keeps our food extremely fresh. You would think with that kind of a system, there would be zero food waste. Unfortunately it’s not quite true. Take bread.

Back when we used to buy bread from New York, we would waste bread if a whole pallet went moldy and we had to throw it all out. Now we’re prepping bread so frequently that we rarely have that problem. However we toss bread if it rips while we’re making a sandwich or if we toast it for too long, or if we toast too many pieces of bread for the amount of customers in line, or if a bag is crushed during transport, or if a batch is made incorrectly.

So for the next few weeks, instead of composting that bread, we’re going to be counting it. We’ll be able to see which locations waste the most bread and understand why. We’re also counting eggs, granola, and falafel…