Are your breakfast profits going in the bin?

10 tips to cut down on waste at breakfast service

  1. For self service dishes use appropriate sized serving utensils – the bigger the spoon, the bigger the portion your guest will take
  2. If serving fresh fruit have this sliced or portioned in some way – grapes are a classic example – unless you cut the bunches into portion sized ‘mini bunches’ your guest will waste half by trying to break off a portion, or even take the whole bunch
  3. Label your fruit juices clearly – how many times have you seen a juice left barely touched because the guest thought it was grapefruit and it turned out to be something different such as pineapple?
  4. Avoid over filling teapots (especially those with poor fitting lids that have a tendency to dribble). This avoids guests wasting napkins and table linen in mopping up avoidable spillages
  5. If you use table clothes, reduce your laundry costs by seating people on an appropriate sized table. If most of your guests will be breakfasting alone or in twos and your most popular tables are those by the window – position your smaller tables here and place large tables for bigger parties where they are less likely to be requested by solo guests
  6. Ask before automatically serving toast – you’ll be shocked to see how much of it ends up in the bin (mainly because it is so often served cold and rubbery!)
  7. Listen to the guest’s order, and only cook and serve what is asked for – if they ask for one egg, that’s all they want, so only serve one egg, not two
  8. Cook to order when you can, to reduce wastage. This might not be possible for ingredients such as sausages, but there should be no excuse not to cook eggs to order, or at least batch cook for busier hotels.
  9. Ask for feedback, so you can learn what your guest like and don’t like. Watch and monitor what comes back on guests’ plates – and follow this up to check the cause of this – are your portions too big, was it not cooked enough, was there a problem with the ingredients or flavour?
  10. Monitor wastage and costs in the exactly the same way as you would for any other meal service. Do you know your exact cost per item and average cost per head for a full English breakfast including cereal, fruit, toast, juice, condiments, and table linen?