Government organizations such as the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority (AVA) and National Environmental Agency (NEA), together with other relevant parties, have come together to discuss strategies to effectively cut down food wastage in the retail industry. Some of these key strategies, together with strategies from other sources, have been combined and highlighted below:
1) Planning
Regularly review dishes on the menu. Restaurants should take note of dishes that are not as popular among diners, and then make changes to them or take them out of the menu so that ingredients needed to prepare them are not wasted. In addition, trim-offs from food can be preserved or used to prepare another dish. One example is fried salmon fish skin, which in itself, is a popular Chinese delicacy. Another example is jam, which can be prepared using trim-offs from fruits.
Credit: Peter Chong
Keeping track of food waste. Retail industries should regularly keep track of what food is wasted, so that they know exactly where these wastes come from and why they are wasted in the first place. After which, they can solve food wastage at its root cause. For instance, knowing that a particular type of food is only in demand during certain periods of the year, retail outlets can reduce their orders to accurately meet that demand.
2) Purchasing
Ordering the right amount of goods at the right time. To make sure that food remains of high quality for a longer period of time and does not spoil quickly, it is essential for retail outlets to order their supplies only when they need them. Moreover, the savings and convenience of making bulk purchases might not be worth the financial costs of unused and wasted food.
Inefficient tracking of food stocks is often a cause of over-ordering of food. Because fresh produce have short shelf-lives, much of these food gets disposed of when they are not our purchased by consumers before they past their timeframe of peak quality. To address this stock-tracking problem, retail outlets can adopt the use of highly-efficient technology and computerized systems to give them real-time feedback of stock levels.
3) Storage
First-In-First-Out (FIFO) approach. As suggested by the name and illustrated by the picture below, the FIFO approach works by using, displaying, or selling food products that arrive earlier and spoils the soonest prior to those that arrive and spoils later. To aid in this process, food products should be marked with their expiration dates and appropriate storage information upon reception.
Credit: Accounting Play
Ensure optimal conditions for food storage. To ensure a high quality of food products and to prevent spoilage or contamination, food products should be stored according to their respective optimal conditions. For instance, the NEA states that “hot food should be kept at above 60 Degree Celsius and cold food below 50 Degree Celsius” to keep them at peak quality.
4) Sales and Service
Selling ‘ugly’ food at a lower cost. To resolve the issue of unsold ‘ugly’ food waste, retail outlets can sell them at a lower price instead of disposing of them. For instance, local supermarket NTUC Fairprice sells ‘ugly’ produce that might be irregular-shaped, discolored, or with any other physical imperfections, at a significantly lower price of S$2. With this initiative together with food donations, the supermarket reported saving a whooping amount of 250,000 kilograms in a single year! In fact, recent reports found that their food savings increased by an additional 48,000 kilograms in between 2015 and 2016.
I have been living in Singapore my entire life and been to the supermarket countless number of times, however I never really noticed ‘ugly’ food going on sale at a discounted price. Hence, I decided to go down to one of the NTUC Fairprice stores with the intention of finding them. To my surprise, I actually managed to find a packet of ‘ugly’ fruits going on sale! (See figure 4). However, I also noticed that the sales of these products are sold only at a very small scale, compared to how large the supermarket was. Therefore, more retail stores should sell ‘ugly’ food, and also sell them at a larger scale to effectively reduce food wastage.
Figure 4. A packet of “ugly” fruits being sold at a discounted price
Be innovative with food display methods. To address consumer’s favorable impression of abundance, retail stores can be creative in displaying their food items to provide the same favorable impression and reduce food wastage at the same time. For instance, restaurants serving buffets can use trays that have less depth but large widths and lengths.
Actively collect feedback. To best meet the expectations and needs of consumers, retail stores should regularly collect feedback from them. For instance, restaurants should invest effort in collecting feedback from diners about the likes or dislikes of dishes served. Some restaurants have feedback forms placed on dining tables, but it might not be effective if diners do have the intention or effort to fill them up.
5) Partnership
Partner with food distribution organisations to donate surplus food. In supermarkets, canned food is a huge source of food waste. NTUC Fairprice donates these non-perishable (i.e., resistant to quick spoilage) canned food items to food distribution organisations like “Food from the Heart”, when the cans are a little damaged or when they are running out-of-date. Numerous bakeries, such as Four Leaves, also donates their unsold bread to the organization (See Figures 5 and 6). For a list of participating stores, click here. To accept donations of perishable food items, “Food from the Heart” newly built a cold storage facility to maintain the high quality and edibility of those donated food.
Figure 5. A participating store of the “Food from the Heart” voluntary food distribution programme
Figure 6. A closer look at the “Food from the Heart” label
It is saddening to know that it is uncommon for retail stores stores to toss away food that has not been sold by the end of the day. I have seen many instances of stores throwing away these perfectly edible leftovers in large garbage bags at the end of the business day. Once, I even saw this a sushi store personnel tearing open the sushi packagings before tossing them into the garbage bag, probably to deter anyone from consuming them. To be fair, they have their reasons for doing so (in which I will discuss in the ‘Government’ section), but this nonetheless leads to a large amount of unnecessary food waste.