Waste Recording
Logging what you throw away, why, and roughly what it was worth.
Recording Waste
Open Waste Recording for the Area and add an entry:
- Recorded by — the staff member
- Item — what it was, e.g. "Sourdough loaf"
- Quantity — how many
- Reason — from the list below
- Estimated value — optional, in pounds
The Reasons
Choosing the right reason is what makes the record worth keeping:
- Prep Waste — trimmings and offcuts from normal preparation
- Overproduction — you made more than you sold
- Expired — passed its date
- Damaged — dropped, spoiled or spilled
- Customer Return — came back from a table
- Other — anything that genuinely does not fit
The temptation is to put everything under "Other". Resist it. A month of "Other" tells you nothing, and the whole value of the record is in the pattern.
Estimated Value
Put roughly what the item cost you. An estimate is fine — nobody expects costed recipes — but do fill it in.
Rough numbers still add up into a real one. "We throw away a bit of bread" and "we throw away £60 of bread a month" prompt very different conversations, and only one of them gets acted on.
It is also more than a management figure. Waste with a value attached is part of your financial record trail: it explains the gap between what you bought and what you sold. If your accountant, or HMRC, ever asks why stock purchased does not reconcile with stock sold, a dated waste log is the answer. An unvalued one is not.
That gives waste a longer useful life than most daily records. Food safety records are generally kept for a period suited to the shelf life of the food; financial records in the UK are usually kept for six years. Your waste log sits in both categories, so keep it for the longer of the two.
Retention is your business's responsibility, not something the app decides for you. An owner can download every record the business holds from Admin → Export Records — take one at year end, at minimum, and keep it with your financial records. Check the exact period with your accountant; it depends on how your business is structured.
Culinary Key holds your records while you are a client and deletes them 90 days after an account closes. The export is your copy, and it is the one that lasts.
What the Record Shows You
Waste logged honestly for a few weeks tends to answer questions on its own:
- Consistent Overproduction on the same day each week is a prep-quantity problem, not a staff problem.
- Repeated Expired entries on one product means you are ordering more than you sell, or rotating stock badly.
- Prep Waste climbing on one dish can mean portioning has drifted.
None of that is visible from inside a busy shift. It only appears once the entries are in one place.
Being Honest About It
Waste records are only useful if they are accurate, and the temptation to under-record is real — nobody enjoys writing down that they binned a tray of food.
But an under-recorded waste log has no value at all. It will not find your overproduction, it will not justify a change to your ordering, and it will not support you if you ever need to show why stock was discarded. Record what actually went in the bin.
If you discard something for a food safety reason — stock from a fridge that failed, or product from a rejected delivery — record it here as well as in the record that prompted it. The two together show the decision and the action that followed it.