Sai Vajaha

I worked at our family's Qdoba in Hoover, so I've seen the waste happen up close. Food got thrown out every shift, a little at a time, and almost always for the same few reasons.

The longer I worked there, the more I noticed that it wasn't really about any one person. It came from how the kitchen runs.

• Nobody wants to run out of food in front of a customer, so the line cooks extra just in case. On a slow afternoon, that extra sits in the pan until it has to go.
• New people learn by watching whoever trained them. If that person always filled the full pan, so does everyone after them.
• Training is mostly about speed and food safety. Waste barely comes up.
• Nobody sees the total. It goes out with the trash at close, so it never feels like a big deal.

None of that is anyone being careless. People do what the kitchen around them does. If the crew can see the number every shift and agrees on one fix, the habit can change before the food ever hits the trash.

Half Pan starts with the crew. Before food goes in the trash, they weigh it and tap why. The next shift starts with that number and one thing to change. Nobody gets named or blamed, and it's in English, Spanish, and Telugu because that's what our crew speaks.

The goal is to stop the waste before it happens, so the crew isn't cooking food just to throw it out and the restaurant keeps the money it was losing. In a study of 114 restaurants, the ones that worked on cutting waste saved $7 for every $1 they put in.

We're starting at our family's Qdoba.

If you run a kitchen and want to try it, it's free and takes about a minute to set up.

Set up your kitchenWhat Half Pan is for