Chapter 38 — Exercises

Thirty-two items, graduated from recall through judgment. Items marked † have worked solutions in the answers appendix. Everything you need is in the chapter; where a figure is not given, state your assumption and carry it through.

Unless told otherwise, use Bellwether's frozen figures: \$1,550,000 of revenue · 37,740 covers · \$1,116,000 of food sales at a 30% target · \$334,776 of planned food purchasing · \$40,000 of utilities · \$46 dinner check · 68 seats · 22 dinner items · 34 purchased menu lines.

A. Recall and definitions

1. Define pre-consumer waste and post-consumer waste and state, in one sentence each, why only one of them is recoverable money.

2. List the five streams a waste audit separates, in the order the chapter presents them, and give one example of what belongs in each.

3. State the six tiers of the food recovery hierarchy in order, from most to least preferable.

4. Write the formula for simple payback period and name two things it ignores.

5. † Explain the difference between source reduction and diversion, and state which one pays and which one costs at a typical American independent restaurant.

6. Which of the following sourcing terms are backed by a federal regulatory standard and which are not: organic, local, natural (on poultry), seasonal, Certified Humane, sustainable?

7. Define greenwashing in a single sentence that does not use the word "green."

8. What is energy intensity, and why does a restaurant compute it instead of just reading the utility bill?

B. Reading the chapter's numbers

9. † Bellwether's audit found 676 lb/week of total waste across 37,740 annual covers. Compute the waste per cover in ounces. Then compute the post-consumer portion (197 lb/week) per cover, also in ounces.

10. The audit priced total waste at \$40,976 a year and recoverable waste at \$11,024. Express each as a percentage of food sales, and say which one belongs in a business case.

11. † Chapter 34 measured a food variance of \$22,282, or 2.0 points. The audit attributed \$11,024 to waste and spoilage. State the remaining dollars, name the five causes that could hold them, and rank the three you would investigate first with your reasoning.

12. Bellwether's chicken program runs 94% utilization on 182 lb/week as purchased; the trout program runs 55% on 34 lb/week. Compute the pounds of unusable loss per week from each. Which program should worry you more, and why is the answer not simply "the one with more pounds"?

13. Using Figure 38.4, what percentage of Bellwether's utility spend is cooking, ventilation, and the HVAC load that serves them, taken together? What does that imply about where a utility audit should start?

C. Cost this

14. † A restaurant runs a four-week waste audit and records the following weekly averages:

Compute each stream's weekly and annual dollar value, the annual total, and the annual recoverable total. If food sales are \$940,000, express the recoverable figure in points of food cost.

15. Using the data in item 14, the restaurant sets a 50% capture target on the recoverable streams. What is the annual saving, and what does it drop to if capture is only 35%? State the swing in dollars.

16. † A kitchen currently discards 22 lb/week of salmon frames from a program that purchases 55 lb/week whole at \$11.60/lb. Converting the frames to fumet would displace \$26/week of purchased base and cost 55 minutes a week of prep at \$23.50/hour fully loaded. Compute the annual net and the annual pounds diverted, then state whether this belongs in a business case and why.

17. A restaurant's roasted-vegetable side costs \$1.12 per portion as costed. Plate-waste sorting suggests a 25% portion reduction is defensible. The full plate currently costs \$9.80 in components with a 2% waste allowance applied on top, and sells for \$34. Compute the new component total, the new plate cost, the new food cost percentage, and the new contribution margin.

D. Payback and utilities

18. † Rank the following by simple payback, shortest first, and draw the line where you would stop approving:

19. For the same list, compute the total installed cost and total annual saving of every measure with a payback under three years. What percentage reduction is that against a \$52,000 utility bill?

20. † A dipper well runs at 0.6 gallons per minute for 11 hours a day, 306 days a year. Combined water and sewer costs \$14.20 per thousand gallons. Compute the annual gallons and the annual dollars. A foot-actuated valve costs \$215 installed. Compute the payback in months.

21. An equipment salesperson quotes a measure at \$14,000 with a \$1,900 annual saving and calls it "a seven-year payback, which is nothing over the life of the equipment." Write the three questions you would ask before responding, and explain what each one is protecting you from.

E. Diversion and compliance

22. An organics subscription costs \$44/week. Adding it lets the restaurant cut trash service from three pickups a week to two, saving \$29/week. Compute the annual net cost, and the cost per cover at 41,000 annual covers.

23. † A 240-seat banquet operation regularly finishes events with 40 to 70 pounds of hot-held, never-plated surplus. A local food-recovery organization can collect twice a week. List, in order, the food-safety questions that must be answered before the first donation, and identify which one most commonly ends the conversation.

24. Your jurisdiction announces a commercial organics mandate with a phase-in threshold based on weekly waste volume, and your restaurant is below the threshold today. Write the three things you would do this quarter and the one thing you would deliberately not do.

25. A restaurant proudly reports a 78% diversion rate. What is the single most important follow-up question, and why can a high diversion rate coexist with a bad waste program?

F. Sourcing claims and communication

26. † A restaurant's menu header reads "local, seasonal, sustainable." Its 28 purchased lines break down as: 6 lines from farms within 60 miles (April–October only), 4 lines from a regional dairy, 3 lines from a regional protein processor, 11 lines from a broadline distributor with variable origin, 2 imported pantry lines, and 2 seafood lines whose origin the kitchen cannot state. Compute how many lines support the claim in July and in January, express each as a percentage, and rewrite the header.

27. Draft the one-page sourcing sheet described in §38.7 for a restaurant of your choosing. Include every purchasing program, the supplier type, the distance, and the date. It must be readable in ninety seconds by a new server.

28. † Write the response. A guest emails to say that a server told them the trout was "caught locally," when in fact it is farmed at a regional aquaculture operation ninety miles away. The guest is not angry; they are asking. Write the reply — under 200 words — and then write the one-sentence correction you will make at the next pre-shift.

29. Write the policy. In no more than 400 words, write the sourcing-claims policy that governs what may appear on your menu, website, and social channels, and what a server may say at the table. Include the approval step and the review cadence.

G. Judgment, ethics, and the business plan

30. † The dilemma. Your compostable packaging costs \$0.52 more per order than conventional. You discover that your market has no residential organics collection, so every container goes to the same landfill either way. Your guests notice and comment positively on the packaging; two reviews have mentioned it. Argue both sides in writing, then state your decision and the sentence you would say to a guest who asked directly whether the containers actually get composted.

31. The community question. Your restaurant is a share-taking entrant in a supplied market, and one of the covers you win comes from a long-established family restaurant four blocks away. Your marketing manager wants to run a campaign built on "supporting our community." Write the memo declining it — or approving it with conditions — and defend the line you draw.

32. † Business Plan extension. Write the Sustainability section for your own plan. It must contain: (a) a waste-audit plan with streams, cadence, log location, and a dollar target expressed in points of food cost; (b) a sourcing-claims rule with the specific claims you will and will not print; and (c) a business case table separating measures that pay from measures that cost, with a net figure and a one-time cost with its payback. Every number must foot, and at least one line must honestly show a measure that costs money.