An investigation into food waste produced in New Zealand restaurants and cafés

About this resource: This Masters thesis research into food waste generated by New Zealand restaurants and cafes found that 24,375 tonnes of food waste were generated per annum. An average cafe or restaurant generates approximately 2.8 tonnes of food waste per annum, of which 61% was avoidable and 39% was unavoidable e.g. eggshells, banana skins, bones. Food spoilage accounted for 7% of all food waste; preparation waste, which includes unsold food, was found to be 60% and plate waste was 33%. By category, the foods wasted the most were: vegetables 28%, bakery 26%, meat 13% and fruit 9%. When cafes with a similar menu and offering were compared, the difference in the amount of avoidable food waste between the best and worst-performing cafes was 43%, showing that there were clear opportunities for some cafes to reduce their food waste. Understanding what these businesses do differently to manage food waste is key to supporting food waste reduction in the hospitality sector.

WasteMINZ produced a report (Mainvil, L., Mirosa, M., Chisnall, S., Jones, E., Marshall, J., & Wassilak, C. (2018). Food Waste in the Cafe & Restaurant: Sector in New Zealand.) based on this study and one other (Chisnall, S. (2018), MDiet thesis: ‘A Taste for Consumption: Food Waste Generation in New Zealand Cafés and Restaurants’. Advisors: Mirosa, Miranda; Mainvil, Louise M Mirosa, L Mainvil) Click HERE to read the report.

Food Waste Innovation Authors: Emily Jones and Miranda Mirosa

Citation: Jones, E. (2018). An investigation into food waste produced in New Zealand restaurants and cafes. (Thesis, Master of Dietetics). University of Otago. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10523/7924