What Happens to Leftover Buffet Food?

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Who cannot love buffet restaurants, right? If you are lucky enough to have found an excellent buffet restaurant, you would always come back for more. Buffet restaurants seem like they are offering bottomless food because the trays would always seem full. Of course, one could not help but think, what happens to the leftover buffet food? With that many foods cooked and served, there is bound to be some leftover food, right?

No More Mystery

Buffet restaurants as well as major hotel chains have a very strict policy when it comes to buffet foods. To protect the wellbeing and health of their guests, any food that has been left out for a couple of hours or more should be discarded. It does not matter if the food is still warm, but foods left standing should be thrown away.

Some buffet restaurants commonly serve the leftover food to the staff at the staff canteen; however, this practice should not be allowed for the very same reason of protecting the health and wellbeing of the staff, too. On the other hand, pastries as well as breads and other types of desserts are typically and more commonly served at the staff canteen, just not the hot dishes though. As stated above, hot dishes should be discarded.

Now, there is one thing that is sure to pop into your mind – that it is going to be a huge waste of food and money to throw out trays and trays of leftover food when there are millions of hungry people who do not have any food to eat. In fact, there are hundreds of hungry people in the vicinity, so why not just donate them so that the food will not go to waste? Not only will food not be wasted, but the buffet restaurant also gets to help these hungry people.

Again, the reason is the same – to protect the health and wellbeing of people. As a buffet restaurant, it will be a very bad publicity to donate leftover food only to put these people’s health at risk. It will not do them a lot of good to do good only to have their good deed turn into a nightmare of food poisoning, hospitalizations, and lawsuits.

So, yes, leftover buffet food is a waste of good food and money.

So, What Can Be Done?

Before buffet restaurants practice the ugly habit of throwing food and money away, there is, after all, these two very simple words that can do a lot of wonders to any type of restaurant for that matter – documenting and budgeting.

Before buffet restaurants open, they have to study the market, their location, the foot traffic, and the type of customers that will be coming into the restaurant. Aside from this, the buffet restaurant should also study the dishes that they can serve, particularly those dishes and desserts that will not spoil too easily. Another factor that they have to consider is the quantity of the dishes that they can serve without wasting too much money and food, especially if the buffet restaurant is just going to open.

The amount of food and dishes is going to be a trial and error thing. Of course, as a newly-opened restaurant, it would be ultimately better to serve a limited quantity of dishes as compared to going overboard and serving bottomless trays of food. Yes, there is the possibility of running out of food, particularly if your guests enjoyed them, but in the end, you will get to save huge amount of money if they do not.

Now, this is where documenting will come into play. The things that you will have to take note of are the following:

The number of guests who arrived.
The types of foods that your guests enjoyed.
The quantity of the dishes that you served.
The quantity of dishes consumed.
The quantity of leftover food.
The return of profit.
The loss.

It would also not hurt your business to take down notes of the dishes that your guests are looking for. Of course, you should only note those that are commonly looked for and those that you think will increase your profit.

When you have documented everything, you can now make a very good budget for the next rounds. Again, as stated above, it is going to be a trial and error period, so it will take some time to come up with a good business recipe, so to speak.

Through these simple steps, you can lessen your profit loss and increase your revenues.

Image Credit: woothblog.com

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