Wastage is the product lost between buying a raw ingredient and the customer finally eating it. It covers natural losses, processing losses and service losses.
Wastage in a restaurant (merma in Spanish) is all the product lost along the restaurant's value chain: from the moment an ingredient is bought until it reaches the customer's plate. There are three main types of wastage. Natural wastage is unavoidable and refers to the inedible parts of a raw product (skins, bones, fish bones, shells, stalks, seeds), which can account for between 10% and 50% of the starting weight depending on the product: a beef tenderloin has natural wastage of 15-20%, while head-on prawns reach 45-50%. Processing wastage happens during preparation (cooking, reduction, evaporation, imperfect cuts) and is partly controllable: meat loses 20-25% of its weight when cooked, a stock reduces, a sponge gets trimmed.
Service wastage includes dishes sent back, leftover portions, uneaten buffet food and out-of-date product that was not used in time. This last type is the most avoidable and the one with the biggest impact on actual food cost. Across the restaurant as a whole, total wastage of 5-8% of purchases is considered acceptable; above 10% points to serious management problems. The gap between theoretical and actual food cost is largely down to wastage that has not been accounted for.
You buy 10 kg of beef tenderloin at €28/kg (€280 in total). After trimming the piece (removing fat, sinew and the chain), 8.2 kg is usable: natural wastage of 18%. The real cost of a kilo of trimmed meat goes from €28 to €34.15/kg. When the portions (200 g raw) are cooked, each one loses 22% of its weight, ending up at 156 g on the plate.
The cost per portion is €6.83. If, on top of that, one portion is burnt in the kitchen and another is sent back (service wastage), you have lost an extra €13.66 that you will not get back. If your recipe costing does not account for the 18% natural wastage, you are calculating a food cost 18% lower than the real one, which explains why the figures do not add up at the end of the month.
Wastage is the silent enemy of restaurant profitability. According to industry studies, Spanish restaurants throw away between 15% and 20% of the food they buy, which adds up to thousands of euros a year in lost product. Controlling wastage is key for three reasons: first, because it directly affects actual food cost (an extra 5% of wastage can mean 2-3 more percentage points on your food cost); second, because Spanish and European law increasingly regulates food waste (Spain's Law 7/2022 on waste); and third, because customers care more and more about sustainability. Reducing wastage takes good recipe costings that reflect real yields, training staff in cutting and making the most of produce, FIFO stock management in the store room, and constant monitoring of what is thrown away and why.
Zindra lets you log wastage by product and reason, compares actual wastage with the theoretical figure from your recipe costings and produces reports that pinpoint the ingredients and processes with the most waste, so you can act on them.
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