The University of Nebraska Lincoln, in the United States, runs five dining operations–two order-ahead, app-based concepts, and three all-you-care-to-eat dining halls. Leanpath’s intelligent food waste prevention platform was already in use at the university when Chef de Cuisine of Culinary Operations Ty Goerke began leading the dining department.

“It’s by far the most robust food waste system I’ve worked with,” he explains. “I love it because I have the data at my fingertips. I can see pictures of the food waste. It gives me peace of mind being able to see into the back of house at any time.”

With that data and insight, Chef Ty and his team have reduced kitchen waste at the university by 40 percent and plate waste at three dining halls by an average of 51 percent with one dining hall going as high as 64 percent.

“Leanpath lets us identify if we’ve got bad recipes, if we’ve got bad prep, if we’ve got bad forecasting, if we’ve got opportunities to work with our students on their dining habits. It’s just a huge resource,” explains Chef Ty.

The biggest impact Chef Ty and his team had is in theall-you-care-to-eat facilities, where kitchen waste from overproduction and plate waste from over-portioning can be common.

Chef Ty has been able to address both, primarily through menu engineering.

Take seafood, a high waste item from overproduction according to Leanpath data. Tilapia was on the menu but wasn’t moving. Working with the university’s Student Dining Council, Chef Ty identified that more recognizable seafood–like shrimp or salmon–were more appealing to diners. The culinary team brought in a broader array of more familiar seafood and waste numbers fell.

A similar lesson was learned with the brand-name meat substitutes the kitchen was serving, which were showing up as waste. “Nothing against those items, but our students don’t care for them anymore. Plant-based for them, now, is more about being able to see the ingredients.”

They swapped out frozen vegetable blends that were leading to waste, with more locally sourced fresh vegetables, which flew off the buffet. 

To address plate waste, the kitchen team has also adjusted recipes and serving styles to subtly shift dining behaviors.

But the work begins with communication. “We communicate with them a lot about taking only what you need. You can always come back for seconds.”

They go further with this communication, leveraging Leanpath’s plate waste education tool, Spark. Spark signage displays a dining hall’s plate waste data, letting students understand their waste trends while educating them on food waste statistics and best practices in reduction.

Then, through menu engineering, Chef Ty and his team make it easier for students to make waste-aware decisions. 

“We were serving these huge New York City style slices of pizza,” explains Chef Ty. “That wasn’t helping us.”

The serving size was too big, leading to plate waste. The kitchen has changed from 18-inch to 16-inch pizzas.

The same with wraps. They were just too big. “We used to use big 16-inch tortillas and it just took so much more product to fill those up and we weren’t charging anything more for it and it was leading to waste.”

They also switched to pre-portioned service for things like fries and chicken wings to reduce the amount of food students take.

A big part of the benefit equation for Chef Ty and his team is food cost.

“Being able to control our spend and our yield is huge,” he says.

There’s also a competitive element to the benefit equation. Chef Ty and his team compete with off-campus dining. So they need to be priced competitively and they need to ensure they are providing food student’s actually want to eat. Both of these are being addressed through their food waste prevention work.

And according to Chef Ty, there’s also a competitive element in showing students their dining facilities are using cutting edge, AI-driven technology to combat food waste.

“Sustainability is really important to our students. We hear about it all the time. And food waste is a big part of that,” he says. “The students want to know what we’re doing, and we’ve been able to promote our work with Leanpath to show them.”