Chapter 38 — Quiz

Twenty-four self-check questions. Answer key in the collapsed block at the bottom — write your answers first.

Multiple choice

1. In a full-service restaurant, the footprint that is simultaneously the largest environmental impact and the largest recoverable cost is:

  • A) single-use packaging
  • B) energy consumption
  • C) food waste
  • D) water use

2. Bellwether's four-week audit found \$40,976 a year of food in the bins. The portion that is recoverable money is:

  • A) all of it
  • B) roughly one third of it
  • C) roughly two thirds of it
  • D) none of it, since the food was already purchased

3. Prep trim is excluded from the recoverable figure because:

  • A) it is too small to matter
  • B) it was already priced into the plate through edible-portion yield testing
  • C) it is legally required to be discarded
  • D) it cannot be weighed accurately

4. Post-consumer plate waste is best understood as:

  • A) a cost variance to be recovered
  • B) a signal about portion size
  • C) a food-safety violation
  • D) evidence of theft

5. The top tier of the food recovery hierarchy is:

  • A) composting
  • B) donation to feed people
  • C) source reduction
  • D) anaerobic digestion

6. As you move down the food recovery hierarchy, the tiers generally become:

  • A) harder to implement and more valuable
  • B) easier to implement and less valuable
  • C) harder to implement and less valuable
  • D) easier to implement and more valuable

7. California's SB 1383 and Vermont's Universal Recycling Law differ structurally in that:

  • A) one is federal and one is state law
  • B) one works through collection and subscription obligations, the other through a disposal ban
  • C) one applies to restaurants and the other does not
  • D) one is voluntary

8. The chapter's simple payback formula is:

  • A) annual saving ÷ installed cost
  • B) installed cost ÷ annual saving
  • C) installed cost × equipment life
  • D) annual saving × equipment life

9. Demand-control ventilation was rejected as a retrofit at Bellwether primarily because:

  • A) it does not work on wood-fired equipment
  • B) the payback is 6.5 years, and the economical moment to buy it was at build-out
  • C) it violates the fire code
  • D) the make-up air unit is undersized

10. In Bellwether's utility allocation, the largest single end use is:

  • A) lighting
  • B) refrigeration
  • C) water heating
  • D) cooking equipment and exhaust

11. Adding an under-counter bar glasswasher at Bellwether would:

  • A) reduce utility cost by about \$400 a year
  • B) be utility-neutral
  • C) increase utility cost, and must be justified on labor and breakage instead
  • D) pay back in under two years on energy alone

12. Certified compostable packaging fails to deliver its environmental benefit when:

  • A) it is stored above 41°F
  • B) the guest's municipality has no commercial organics collection that accepts food-service fiber
  • C) it is used for hot food
  • D) it is printed with ink

13. Which sourcing term is backed by a federal certification program with real enforcement?

  • A) local
  • B) seasonal
  • C) organic
  • D) sustainable

14. On meat and poultry, the USDA term natural establishes that the product is:

  • A) raised outdoors with access to pasture
  • B) minimally processed with no artificial ingredients, and nothing about how the animal was raised
  • C) free of antibiotics
  • D) certified organic

15. Bellwether's sourcing audit found its "sourced locally and seasonally" header defensible on:

  • A) all 34 menu lines
  • B) 18 of 34 in August and 11 of 34 in February
  • C) 11 of 34 year-round
  • D) 6 of 34 in any month

16. The chapter's operating rule for sourcing claims is:

  • A) claim the restaurant, not the item
  • B) claim the item, not the restaurant
  • C) make no claims at all
  • D) claim only what the distributor certifies

17. In packaging, the measure that saves money rather than costing it is:

  • A) switching to certified compostable containers
  • B) double-bagging to prevent leaks
  • C) making cutlery and accessories opt-in
  • D) upgrading to heavier-gauge containers

18. Bellwether's sustainability business case nets:

  • A) about \$6,800 a year, recurring, on \$2,809 of one-time cost
  • B) a loss of about \$3,000 a year
  • C) about \$40,000 a year
  • D) exactly break-even

Short answer

19. Bellwether's waste audit accounted for exactly half of the 2.0-point food variance Chapter 34 measured. Name the five causes that could hold the other half, and state which single stream in the audit gives circumstantial evidence about one of them.

20. A restaurant runs a one-week waste audit and acts on it immediately. Give two specific reasons the chapter says one week is not enough.

21. Bellwether's chicken program runs 94% utilization and its trout program 55%, in the same kitchen in the same week. Explain how that happens without anyone doing anything wrong, and what the waste audit contributes.

22. Composting costs Bellwether \$832 a year net and will never pay. State, in two sentences, how you would present that number to a business partner.

23. Explain why the chapter refuses to change the Hearth Chicken cost card even though the plate-waste data supports a 20-cent reduction.

24. A guest asks whether your restaurant is sustainable. Write the answer in under forty words, using the discipline from §38.8.

Answer key **1.** C — food waste. It is the top line of both rankings in Figure 38.1, and the only footprint where the right action and the profitable action are the same physical act. **2.** B — roughly one third. \$11,024 of \$40,976, or about 27%. Prep trim (already in the cost cards) and post-consumer waste (already sold) make up the rest. **3.** B — Chapter 11's yield tests priced trim into edible-portion cost, so eliminating it creates yield, not savings. **4.** B — a signal about portion size. The guest paid for it, so it is not a variance. **5.** C — source reduction. **6.** B — easier to implement and less valuable. Which is why a vendor's sales call always lands near the bottom: composting is the tier somebody can sell you. **7.** B — SB 1383 obligates collection and subscription (plus a separate edible-food-recovery duty for defined generator tiers); Vermont's Act 148 phased in a landfill ban on food scraps. **8.** B — installed cost ÷ annual saving. **9.** B — \$9,400 ÷ \$1,450 = 6.5 years as a retrofit, against roughly 3.2 years had it been specified inside the original \$52,000 hood package. **10.** D — cooking equipment and exhaust, at \$12,800 or 32%. **11.** C — it adds roughly \$260 a year of water and electricity. The case for it is labor, service speed, and breakage. **12.** B — compostable packaging requires commercial composting conditions. In a landfill it behaves much like what it replaced, and in a recycling stream it is a contaminant. **13.** C — organic, under the USDA National Organic Program. **14.** B. **15.** B — 18 of 34 in August (53%), 11 of 34 in February (32%). **16.** B. **17.** C — opt-in accessories save about \$39 a year at Bellwether's volume and remove roughly 437 cutlery sets, while the compostable substitution costs \$324. **18.** A — net +\$6,790 a year recurring, \$2,809 one-time, 5.0-month payback. **19.** Theft, over-portioning, poor purchasing (price drift), uncosted specials, and menu drift. Stream E — post-consumer plate waste — gives circumstantial evidence about over-portioning, but it is evidence, not measurement: food can come back because the portion is large *or* because the item was cooked or seasoned badly. **20.** Any two of: one week is one week's weather, one week's forecast error, and one crew's mood; the crew's behavior changes under observation, so early weeks and late weeks differ for reasons the log cannot distinguish; seasonality changes both yields and volume; a single outlier event (a bad delivery, a broken lowboy) can dominate a seven-day sample. **21.** The two decisions were made months apart against different questions — the chicken program was designed as a cross-utilization exercise for food cost, and the trout was a considered decision that the labor and cooler space were not worth the frames. Neither was wrong at the time. The waste audit's contribution is that it forces the two numbers to sit next to each other for the first time, which is also how it surfaced that the fumet is worth only about \$208 a year. **22.** Something close to: "Composting costs us \$832 a year net after the trash-service reduction — about 2.2 cents a cover — and it takes what we send to the landfill from roughly 17.6 tons to about 1.8. It does not pay and I am not going to pretend it does; here is what it buys." **23.** Because a bin tells you food came back, not why. Roots can return because the portion is too large, because they were under-seasoned, because the chicken is filling, or because they sat on a pass too long — and three of those four are fixed by cooking better rather than serving less. The correct sequence is a two-week portion test with stream E sorted by item, then a re-cost at the next menu cycle. **24.** For example: "We compost, we buy these seven things from three farms I can name, and we cut what we send to the landfill by about ninety percent last year." Specific and checkable — and deliberately not "we're a sustainable restaurant," which is a claim about the whole restaurant.