World Food Day: where food waste hides in your operation

Food waste in an F&B operation rarely sits in one place. It hides across the chain: at receiving, in storage, in production, in transfers, in outlet holding, on the plate and at the end of the day. Food wastage tracking starts by mapping those stages, recording every write-off with a stage and a reason, and reviewing the pattern weekly so the biggest repeat causes get fixed first.

Today is World Food Day, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) theme for 2026 is “Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow.” In a kitchen, the most useful innovation is often a plain one: knowing, item by item and outlet by outlet, what you throw away and why.

What the national figure says, and what it doesn’t

Malaysia’s headline number comes from the Solid Waste Management and Public Cleansing Corporation (SWCorp). Malaysians threw away about 6,000 tonnes of edible food a day in 2025, roughly 240 lorry loads, up from about 5,000 tonnes a day in 2024.

It is worth being clear about what that figure is. It is a national total for food waste in Malaysia (pembaziran makanan), not a restaurant-sector benchmark. It doesn’t say how much comes from commercial kitchens, and it can’t tell any operator whether its own waste is high or low. For that, the only useful number is your own.

That is also the encouraging part. Much of what a restaurant or central kitchen throws away is within its control, and much of it is predictable once it is written down.

What is food wastage tracking?

Food wastage tracking is the routine recording of every item written off — what it was, how much, where in the chain it happened and why — so waste can be measured, costed and reduced rather than discovered as a gap at month-end.

It is not the same as inventory variance. Variance is stock you can’t account for; tracked waste is stock you can. Good food waste tracking moves as much as possible from the first column into the second. The variance side, the gap between theoretical and actual usage, has its own post. This one is about the waste you can see, if you know where to look.

Where food waste hides, stage by stage

Stage	How waste hides	What to measure	First fix
Receiving	Short-dated or damaged goods signed for at the door; over-delivery accepted to be safe	Rejections and remaining shelf life at receipt, by supplier	Check dates and condition against a receiving spec before signing
Storage	Older stock pushed to the back; opened packs unlabelled; temperature lapses	Expiry write-offs by item and storage location	Label opened packs; enforce first in, first out at stock-out
Production	Trim and yield loss above recipe; over-production; failed batches	Actual yield against recipe yield; batches produced against batches dispatched	Plan production against outlet demand, not last week’s habit
Transfers	Damage in transit; goods dispatched but never received; short life left on arrival	Dispatched against received, line by line; shelf life at outlet receipt	Reconcile transfers both ways; send the shortest-dated stock first
Outlet holding	Prepped items past holding time; prep for a rush that doesn’t come	Holding-time discards by item and daypart	Prep smaller, more frequent batches for slow dayparts
Plate and portion	Over-portioning; plates returned with food left	Usage against recipe on key dishes; returned plates	Portion tools and photo SOPs at the station
End of day	Unsold cooked food and prepped components	End-of-day write-offs by item and day of the week	Cut production on the days that repeatedly over-produce

Two patterns tend to show up once a team fills this in.

The same waste gets counted twice. An outlet over-orders, the central kitchen produces to the order, and the surplus is written off at the outlet two days later as “expired”. It looks like an outlet problem. It started as an ordering one.

End-of-day waste is visible but rarely explained. By the evening, the cause sits two stages upstream, in what was ordered and produced. If over-production is the recurring reason, the fix is in planning, and demand forecasting that starts with the data you already have is the place to begin.

How do you start food wastage tracking with reason codes?

Most restaurant food waste is recorded, if at all, as a single number at the end of the night. Six steps turn that into something you can act on:

1. Keep the reason codes short. Six to eight codes cover most kitchens: expired, spoiled or damaged, over-production, preparation error, holding time exceeded, customer return, transfer damage, rejected at receiving. If “other” keeps getting chosen, add the code people are describing.
2. Record at the point of waste. A phone or tablet at the bin station beats a clipboard filled in from memory after close.
3. Count in the unit you store. Staff weigh or count the item as it sits; the system converts and costs it from the item master.
4. Tag the stage and the location. Every entry says where in the chain it happened, using the same seven stages as the map above.
5. Treat a blank log as a question. An outlet with no recorded waste for a week is more likely not recording than not wasting.
6. Put a ringgit value on every line. Kilos get the fix; RM gets the attention of the people who approve it.

A weekly waste review that stays short

Month-end totals arrive too late to change anything. A weekly review, half an hour with the central kitchen manager and area managers, keeps the log useful:

• The ten most costly items, network-wide, with the stage and reason for each.
• Outlet comparison, waste as a share of sales, so the outlier stands out.
• Repeat lines. Anything in the top ten for the third week running gets an owner and a date.
• Last week’s fix. Did the change in prep quantity or par level reduce the line, or did the waste move somewhere else?

Keep it a working conversation, not a search for someone to blame. People record waste honestly when recording it doesn’t get them in trouble. The weekly habit also makes the month-end stock take calmer, because recorded waste stops turning up as unexplained variance.

Where RMS and the AI-Kitchen Command Center fit

Codemax RMS (Resource Management System) records wastage against the same stock records as receiving, production, transfers and sales. A write-off at an outlet reduces stock-on-hand and appears alongside theoretical-versus-actual variance for the item, so recorded and unrecorded waste can be read together. FIFO and expiry checks are enforced at stock-out, which addresses the storage line directly. Transfers are recorded at dispatch and at receiving, so goods that leave the central kitchen and never arrive are visible. And production is planned against rolling outlet demand, with pick lists and batch tickets, so the kitchen produces to what outlets need rather than to padded orders.

The AI-Kitchen Command Center watches every outlet, product and shift against its own baseline and flags the ones drifting, such as an outlet whose waste on one item has crept up while sales stay flat, before it reaches the P&L. Alerts and narrative reports can go out by email, WhatsApp, Slack or Microsoft Teams.

Neither replaces the person at the bin station recording what was thrown away and why. They make that record count. If you’d like to map this onto your own outlets, talk to our team.

Questions worth asking this week

• Where does each outlet record waste today, and at what time of day?
• Which reason codes are in use, and how often is “other” chosen?
• What were last week’s three most costly waste items, and which stage did each come from?
• Do the items outlets over-order match the items they write off at end of day?
• Is any outlet recording no waste at all?

If the answers take a day to find, start with one week of honest records at two outlets and the central kitchen. That is enough to see where your waste hides.

Frequently asked questions

How much food is wasted in Malaysia?

According to SWCorp data reported by the New Straits Times in June 2026, Malaysians threw away about 6,000 tonnes of edible food a day in 2025, up from about 5,000 tonnes a day in 2024. The figure is a national total and does not break out the restaurant sector, so F&B operators need their own records to know their share.

What is food wastage tracking in a restaurant?

Food wastage tracking in a restaurant is the routine recording of every item written off: what it was, how much, where in the chain it happened and why. Costed and reviewed weekly, those records show which items, outlets and stages produce the most waste, so fixes target real causes instead of the general feeling that waste is too high.

What reason codes should a restaurant waste log use?

A restaurant waste log works best with a short list of six to eight reason codes, such as expired, spoiled or damaged, over-production, preparation error, holding time exceeded, customer return, transfer damage and rejected at receiving. If staff keep choosing other, add a code for what they are describing. A long list gets ignored.

How often should an F&B business review food waste?

An F&B business should review food waste weekly, by outlet and by item, with a fuller look at month-end alongside the stock take. Weekly is frequent enough to change next week's ordering and production, and the review can be short: the most costly items, the outlet outliers, the repeat offenders and whether last week's fix worked.

What is the difference between food waste and inventory variance?

Food waste is stock that was written off and recorded with a reason. Inventory variance is the difference between the stock a system expected and the stock counted, which includes unrecorded waste as well as receiving errors, over-portioning and loss. Good food waste tracking moves as much as possible out of unexplained variance and into recorded waste.

Sources

1. Malaysians throw away 6,000 tonnes of edible food daily — New Straits Times, 15 Jun 2026
2. World Food Day 2026 — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 16 Oct 2026