Waste Watcher Profile - June 2009
Jim Cooley, Executive Chef
Bon Appetit / Seattle University, Seattle, WA
About Jim Cooley
Jim Cooley is Executive Chef with Bon Appetit Management Company at Seattle University. He oversees culinary operations for five locations on this urban campus, anchored by the busy and modern Cherry Street Market. Jim has spent the past nine years on the campus of this independent, Jesuit Catholic university in the Pacific Northwest.Food Waste Tracking History
Seattle University has been using food waste tracking tools from LeanPath to track all pre-consumer food waste for 1.5 years through a unique public/private partnership funded partially by Seattle Public Utilities."I always have good food cost here even with very high [product costs]. I attribute it to [LeanPath's] ValuWaste."
Results
Chef Jim reports that food waste tracking "works great" while emphasizing it's important to "use the tools and let them help you."One of Chef Jim's top goals was to reduce waste. He participates in food waste composting and food recovery initiatives but also sees the importance of reducing waste at the source, because that avoids the waste altogether and reduces costs for the operation. When the operation started waste tracking, one of their objectives was to lower or maintain food costs.
Many operators have experienced that food prices have risen quite a bit with the current economy. However Chef Jim states "I always have good food cost here even with very [product costs]. I attribute it to ValuWaste". Using the ValuWaste system to track any wasted pre-consumer food items allows him to adjust production or manage his menus to keep costs in line.
He was most surprised by the amount of overproduction as a whole. For example, the system helped him to identify the overproduction of starches and vegetables, and he was able to reduce the production of those items, but more importantly, recover some of those items for other uses.
Recommendations
Chef Jim’s advice for Chef's new to waste tracking : "Get the entire team on-board from the start. My staff was on board the very first day." An engaged staff makes the program run efficiently and creates better data. His foodservice staff "tended to police itself and started using different practices to save time, i.e. using 1 waste container per table" to collect kitchen waste.An added benefit, and one of the best parts of using the ValuWaste program, is that it “raises awareness of the entire staff as to food waste and abuse.” The staff at Seattle University even came up with different suggestions for waste categories, again making the system work more efficiently by providing the chef with better data about his operation.
"The staff likes and uses it" says Chef Jim. "New people actually hounded me to get their name in the data base."Read a Seattle University Spectator article on Bon Appetit's use of LeanPath's food waste tracking tools: "Bon Appetit Weighs in on Waste, Consumption"
