How to cut food write-offs at your café: tracking, FIFO and recipes
Why cafés throw away food and money, how to keep a write-off log, store by FIFO, buy by sales and see the gap between your recipes and your stock.
Vitrina team5 minute read
Contents
In short
Every write-off is money the kitchen has already paid and thrown away.
Record every write-off with a reason: without a reason you can’t see what to fix.
FIFO, date labels and buying by sales reduce spoilage.
Recipes show the gap between what should have been used and what actually disappeared.
How much food the food service sector throws away
Food waste looks like small change: a salad left on the plate here, a carton of sour milk there. Across the sector, though, it adds up to a lot of money. According to the UN, food service (cafés, restaurants, canteens) throws away hundreds of millions of tonnes of food a year, and part of that loss starts in the storeroom, long before the guest’s plate.
1.05 billion t
of food waste worldwide in 2022, or 19% of the food available to consumers, according to the UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024
Source: UN News
290 million t
of that came from food service: cafés, restaurants, canteens
Source: UN News
Food waste worldwide in 2022, million tonnes
- Households631
- Food service290
- Retail131
Where write-offs come from
| Cause | What it looks like | What helps |
|---|---|---|
| Spoilage | Food went off on the shelf | FIFO and date labels |
| Buying “just in case” | You bought more than you sold | Ordering by sales and stock levels |
| Kitchen mistakes | Ruined prep, dishes made twice | Recipes and portion standards |
| Returns from guests | A dish left uneaten or sent back | A reason in the log and a talk with the kitchen |
| Unexplained usage | Food “disappeared” without a record | Stocktakes compared with recipes |
A write-off log
A write-off without a reason explains nothing. When a cook writes “went off” or simply bins the food, all you see is that money is missing. A log with reasons shows what exactly to fix: purchasing, storage or the way the kitchen works.
What to record with every write-off
The item and the quantity, in the same units as in your stock.
The reason: spoiled, defective, remade, returned by a guest.
Who wrote it off and when.
For expensive items, a photo as well, so you can sort it out later without arguments.
FIFO and date labels
FIFO (first in, first out) is a simple rule: whatever arrived first gets used first. Without it, new stock goes to the front and the old stock quietly spoils behind it.
- 1
New stock goes to the back
New deliveries go behind the old ones, so what needs using first is always within reach.
- 2
A date on every container
Label prep and opened packs with the date and time: then you can see what to use today.
- 3
Short dates go into the dish of the day
Put ingredients that are close to their date into a special, not into the bin.
- 4
Check the shelves before ordering
Before you order, look at what you already have: that way you won’t buy again what is sitting in the cold room.
Buying by sales
Ordering “by eye” mostly errs in one direction: people buy extra, because fearing a shortage feels more natural than counting. It is more reliable to count from sales: how many dishes you sold last week, how many ingredients they used according to the recipes, and what is in stock right now. The difference between what you need and what you have is your order.
Stocktakes: what should have been used and what disappeared
A recipe tells you how much food should have gone into the dishes you sold. A stocktake shows how much actually left the storeroom. The gap between the two is made of write-offs nobody recorded: remakes, oversized portions, theft. If the gap grows, look for the cause in the kitchen, not at the supplier.
How Vitrina does it
Vitrina’s stock module writes off ingredients by recipe with every sale, the same way for the dining room, the website and delivery. Stock movements carry reasons (delivery, write-off, return), a cancelled order puts the written-off items back into stock, and a supplier invoice only needs a photo: AI suggests the line items, and a person checks them and posts the delivery. Stock, recipes and purchasing come with the “Full” plan.
Frequently asked questions
What is FIFO in a kitchen?
It is the “first in, first out” rule: ingredients that arrived earlier are used first. New stock goes behind the old, and every container gets a date label, so less food spoils.
How often should I do a stocktake?
Expensive and perishable items are often counted weekly, and the whole stock monthly. What matters is counting regularly and the same way every time: then the results can be compared with each other.
Can ingredients be written off automatically?
Sales can write off ingredients by recipe on their own, which is how Vitrina’s stock module works. Spoilage or defects are recorded by a person, with a reason. More on the stock page.