Dishing The Dirt On Banquet Waste
Our two cents
Reducing leftovers boils down to every hotel’s policy. At the ground level, waiters can be trained to prompt guests for second helpings or takeaways.
In the kitchen, chefs can be taught to prepare individual portions for each guest, which has proven to be a hit at Fullerton and Hilton hotel, according to our knowledge.
What a dirty business! Despite strict grooming standards like having bunned hair and trimmed fingernails, we were not given time to wash our hands while serving the nine-course meals due to time constraints.
Of course, it does not hurt to offer higher wages and more relevant training to outsourced and unmotivated labourers like us (whose salaries were slashed by more than 50 per cent by the hospitality school-cum-agency).
Or treat staff a little more kindly.
At the four-star hotel in River Valley, we spent our dinner break questioning the manager-in-charge about the need to food-portion for every course.
After spewing profanities about how our unfounded curiosity was getting on his nerves, he barked, “We’re only a small hotel. Just go out there and get your work done!”
If work meant getting paid $5.50 every hour to waste some 50 kilos of food, we would rather call it quits.
ONE CHINESE WEDDING DINNER GIVES RISE TO FIVE BUCKETS OF FOOD WASTE?!!!!
Shocking. Really.
And seriously, who wants to sign an indemnity form just to tapau!? That’s unheard of.
Any thoughts anyone on how to reduce food wastage if you are the one tasked to organise such events? Be it your own wedding, your company’s D&D or other celebratory functions?
Reducing food wastage starts from controlling the amount of food that goes on the plate. We can do so by asking ourselves if there really is a need to have 8 or 10-course meals at the chinese banquet. By my observations, diners start rejecting food after the 5th course as they are already full. As for other celebratory functions, it is important to bear in mind that guests are mostly there for socialisation and not to eat.
Agreed. I feel that people in affluent countries don’t place any thought to how much they can eat just because they can afford to. I think the best solution for chinese style banquet is to portion the food for individuals before serving (of course, ask who wants the next course too). That way only those who want more will get food, and you won’t need to serve those who are full or do not like the next dish.
Seriously, this is bad, seriously bad. If they know what it feels like to be those who have no food to eat, I wonder what would they do. I am so sad at the thought about the food wastage, if all the food wasted were to combined together, I guess, it can feed those that are suffering from hunger for years to come. In the future, if I have a restaurant, I would wanna people to pay for their food wastage and use the money to buy food for the poor.
so whats the sollution to this
Wow, can’t believe the amount of waste you found. truly shocking and upsetting. What can we do about it though?
Very insightful. Indian weddings (including mine) come to mind where diners are usually stuffed halfway down the meal. As you had mentioned in one of the earlier comments, the best way to do this is to limit wedding meals to a few courses – you end up getting better food quality and save yourself excessive calories + food waste.