Catering food waste action plan
Published by End Food Waste Australia for Green Industries South Australia, with the Australian Foodservice Advocacy Body, City of Adelaide, OzHarvest, caterers, waste contractors and catering clients. Rawtec collected and analysed the food waste volumes and origins. 2024.
Summary published
In catering, 20% of the food served is never eaten. The average is 150 grams per cover.
Rawtec measured where it goes. Across mining camps, events, education and other catering, the sector serves 106.9 million meals a year and wastes 17,900 tonnes of food doing it.
Only 100 tonnes of that, 1%, gets repurposed.
Wasted across the catering sector each year
Food wasted per meal served
Of that waste currently repurposed
Cost benefit ratio of acting on it
Where the waste happens
Four stages, roughly evenly split
Serving waste 30%, from buffet and self-service food nobody takes. Plate waste 28%, served and left. Preparation waste 25%, trim and unused portions. Spoilage 17%, from over-ordering and expired stock. There is no single villain here, which is why the actions come in sets.
Per meal, in grams
Of 621 grams of food served per meal, 73% gets eaten. The remaining 167 grams splits into 50 g served but untaken, 47 g left on the plate, 42 g lost in preparation and 28 g spoiled.
Mining camps are the biggest segment
Mining serves 63.0 million meals a year and wastes 10,700 tonnes, with spoilage at 22% running higher than the sector average. Education and other events serve 28.6 million meals and waste 3,400 tonnes. Events serve 15.3 million meals and waste 3,800 tonnes, with plate waste at 48%, by far the highest.
The business case is not marginal
A cost benefit ratio of better than 6:1, with 80% of sites recovering their costs within two years.
Customers are already ahead of the sector
91% of customers prefer to buy from organisations taking steps to reduce food waste. 63% are bothered by wasted food, mostly for economic reasons. And 48% of diners name portion size as the main reason they leave food.
Staffing is part of the waste problem
51% of food businesses are struggling to fill jobs and nearly 60% have no structured or formal staff training. Waste follows from that as much as from any equipment or forecasting issue.
Even the plates matter
Warm-coloured plates showed 61.83 grams of waste per meal against a surveyed average of 80.21 grams. Small design changes are doing real work here.
What to do about it
Build food waste reduction into contract design with clients. Client expectations of abundance are one of the root causes, so the contract is where that gets negotiated.
Accurate forecasting from historical data, standardised recipes and procedures, and inventory management with proper stock rotation and storage.
Favour plated service over buffet. Serving waste is the single largest stage at 30%, and buffets are where it happens.
Portion control, smaller plates and warm-coloured plates. Nearly half of diners say portion size is why they leave food.
Measure and review waste systematically, train staff on prevention, and set up donation relationships with food rescue organisations.
Upstream spoilage happening off site could not be quantified and is excluded, and no suppliers took part in the workshops or focus groups. Some data sets did not cover the full scope and gaps were filled from literature values. Aviation catering and the health sector are out of scope.
Related reports
The other sector action plans.
The full plan includes the segment-by-segment food waste account and the actions grouped by enable, prevent and repurpose.
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