Restaurants get involved

Engage with your customers- diners want the opportunity to take leftovers home but 83% of the public think it is embarrassing or not allowed. Make the campaign a success and make sure every diner gets offered a ‘Take Me Home’ Box.

If your restaurant already offers take home containers, you can still be involved by signing up as a supporter of the Too Good To Waste Oxfordshire and receive a free Supporter’s Pack and a listing on our website.

The Supporter’s Pack helps communicate the Too Good to Waste Oxfordshire message to staff and customers and put good practice into action. It useful tips and advice for reducing all types of food waste.

Proudly display the ‘Too Good to Waste Oxfordshire’ logo by downloading the logo for your own website by right clicking here and choosing ‘save link as’ or ‘save image as’.

 1. Initiating a food waste audit is a great first step in managing food waste. Separate your food waste each day (for two or three days) into three waste streams (spoilage’, ‘plate’ and ‘prep’ waste ), weigh and record the contents. Understanding the weight and composition of your food waste will enable you to more effectively reduce food waste and to accurately calculate the cost of food waste collection. Unilever Food Solutions have partnered with us to create a complete waste audit and waste reducing toolkit – use it to get started!

2. You can implement some or all of these measures to reduce food waste:
- Plan seasonal menus to reduce spoilage and food miles.
- Ensure your kitchen only orders what it needs, minimising spoilage.
- Maintain your knife skills and become confident with nose-to-tail cooking.
- Try keeping the skin on produce like potato chips and roast pumpkin.
- Use cuttings, peel & excess supply to make pickles, marmalade & stocks.
- Offer to wrap food for customers to take home, thereby minimising plate waste.
- Consider offering different portion sizes, including children’s menu.
- Make a note of food that is consistently returned uneaten.

3. Ideally, your remaining food waste should either be used for onsite composting and anaerobic digestion or collected by a sustainable waste collection service.

Restaurants can sign up for the campaign here to receive the Supporter’s Pack. Please get in touch if you have any queries or questions regarding signing up or the Supporter’s Pack. For information about waste-audits please contact us.