In recent years restaurants have adopted more eco-friendly practices. McDonald’s, KFC, Starbucks, and Subway have different programs for waste management and energy consumption. Recently, millennial has enhanced the trend of healthy eating and more sustainable living conditions.
Customers have become concerned with eco-friendliness and it has become imperative for restaurants to make a change. This not only appeals to customers but also helps your business grow by cutting down on food costs and saving on utilities. If you are thinking about greening up your restaurant but feel it is a monumental task, then this post is for you!
Here are ten smart ways Your Restaurant Can Go Green:
1. Reduce Wastage of Food
The most imperative step to make your restaurant eco-friendly is to reduce the wastage of food.
As per the Green Restaurant Association, the restaurant average wastage is approximately 25000 and 75000 pounds of food every year.
How to reduce food wastage in your restaurant?
RestroApp is one of the most reliable food ordering app development platform offering a feature of inventory management. You can count the opening and closing stock during the shift change, stock usage, giving real-time updates. This feature has an amazing ability to send alerts to restaurateur smartphone when the inventory is getting expired.
Moreover, it helps in tracking inventory in real-time. Furthermore, it prevents product shortages or overflow of orders allowing you to keep enough inventory without having too much in the warehouse.
2. Adopt a Restaurant Online Food Ordering System
With a reliable restaurant online ordering platform, you can go paperless by taking online reservations and orders. The payment gateway feature in the food app lets the customers avoid the wait for the orders to be taken and processed. The ability to pay bills takes the customer’s convenience one step ahead.
Moreover, a restaurant online food ordering app helps in creating paperless bills for customers and restaurateur as payment is processed online. In addition to this there is a long list of benefits of online mobile food ordering:
1. Monitor your expenses: This helps in getting precise information. You can keep track of costs incurred during the preparation and customer delivery.
2. Strong Online Presence: Online food ordering app means being in front of the customers 24/7 without paying extra for marketing.
3. Get Consumer Insights: It is easy to get order history and what customers prefer. The data you obtain is valuable for targeted promotion and to entice customers to keep coming back.
3. Cook Seasonal Dishes
When you have planned to start a sustainable green restaurant, you should be cooking what’s in season. You can then customize the food items and the menu accordingly. Your customers will certainly appreciate the available options and the freshness behind the menu. Additionally, buying seasonal food helps in cutting the food cost.
As per the Food Tech Connect survey, 35% of millennial love to place orders on mobile phones to the restaurant for quick service.
The menu management system offers complete visibility, control over consumer’s digital experience and access to valuable performance data. With this feature customization, the preparation and reporting process becomes a masterpiece where you can control all the information in one place.
4. Donate Surplus Food
Every eco-friendly restaurant or green restaurant has a food pantry on speed dial. Even when there is food waste control in place, there still will be surplus inventory on different occasions. In that case, it is recommended to donate food to the under-privileged.
5. Utilize Energy-Efficient Appliances
Does your restaurant have high energy bills? If so, have a closer look at your kitchen appliances? The food industry consumes approximately $10 billion every year but so much is wasted by the appliances that aren’t energy-efficient or maintained properly. While food preparation has the largest percentage of restaurant industry bills, you can purchase green appliances that help reduce energy waste.
You can also take care of the following:
- Keep indoor temperature moderate. It should not be too hot or cold.
- Use a heat recovery system.
- Install a high-efficiency water heater.
6. Your Restaurant Interior
Casting a critical eye over your restaurant reveals a treasure love for simple changes that you can make. Yes, there are plenty of ways to make your dining area sustainable. Start with furniture.
- Purchase locally-built table and chairs for the dining space.
- Next is to reduce tablecloth and napkins. Wait, what? Linen may seem a more eco-friendly option. Instead, choose paper materials that can be recycled. If you still need linen, go for softer, cloth materials.
- Have you started using reusable fabric napkins instead of the ones that become landfill? This single switch can help save a staggering 20,000 trees every year.
- Make sure that your employees clean dishes with biodegradable chemicals and steam clean your floors with hot water.
7. Save water
Do you know that a leaky faucet leads to thousands of gallons lost every year?
Well, water cost easily adds up in the restaurant. Have a check on restaurant pipes and make sure there are no leaks. Another great way to save water is to serve water to that guest who asks for it and run the dishwasher when full.
8. Consider Composting
This is one of the best steps for your eco-friendly environment. And it is simple! Keep a separate can in the kitchen for staff to dispose of food-based waste. Every evening, dump it in an outdoor compost bin.
9. Pre-ordering and Time Scheduling
The restaurant ordering system app allows customers to order food in advance. This further improves the efficiency in delivery and also tap potential customers that might not end up ordering food because of elongated delivery time.
10. Spread the Word to your Customers
People love hearing about interesting things. Going organic is good but there is no use if you don’t tell your customers via social media, restaurant online ordering platform, and other marketing platforms. Many green practices go unseen until you don’t tell. So ensure to inform your patrons that you are doing everything possible to protect the environment.
Share your events, occasions, live kitchen videos and anything that happens in your restaurants with customers with the help of social media integration feature. Your customers love to see green restaurant updates and changes, so make it a point to keep them posted via Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and more.
In addition to this, include your eco-practices in your marketing endeavors and celebrate events like Earth Day at your restaurant. This will give you another chance to promote your initiatives.
Final Words
Going green is a smart move. Use a restaurant management system, save water, consider composting, use energy-efficient appliances, and reduce food waste. If you accomplish some of these practical ways to make your restaurant greener, you are all set to step your restaurant up a notch.
RestroApp is a comprehensive online food ordering app development company that helps your eco-friendly green restaurant by providing you with an efficient mobile app having exquisite features. Loyalty programs, refer & earn, push notifications and scheduling orders provides additional value which will help you rank above your competition.