Was at the farm several weeks ago when I was invited to speak with Prue Bentley on ABC Victorian Statewide Drive about our research on food waste in the quick-service restaurant sector.
Since I was close by I decided to pop by the ABC Ballarat studio and do the interview in person. Statewide Drive is broadcast across regional Victoria, hence the interview was reaching listeners in towns and communities where the realities of food service, staffing, supply, distance and waste can be quite different.
This interview was also different from the other ones I’ve done – listeners could leave messages and chime in with their own experiences and opinions while the program was on air, I quite like that interaction. It made the conversation quite interesting, since food waste is one of those subjects that appears simple until people start talking about what actually happens through lived experiences.
We often imagine food waste as meals left unfinished by a customer – our research showed that a significant amount of waste happens much earlier than that – through incorrect orders, returned food, overpreparation, spills, equipment problems and the difficulty of predicting whether a shift will be unexpectedly busy or unusually quiet.
The food waste is cumulative across a large sector. It’s easy to solely frame food waste on the consumer side but in fact it’s also produced through systems – through how demand is forecast, how work is organised, how staff are trained, how menus are designed and how much agency people have within those conditions.
The interview was interesting to me as people weren’t only reacting to the findings but locating the issue within their own experiences of hospitality, consumption and everyday life.
The interview was part of the continuing discussion around the End Food Waste Australia CRC Quick Service Restaurant Sector Action Plan, developed by our RMIT University School of Design research team – Caroline Francis, Karli Verghese, Ruby Chan, Sam Quirk and myself.
