# Do Restaurants 'Recycle' Uneaten Food? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 20, 2002, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691 "2002-04-20T18:07:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2002, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/41 "2002-04-21T16:15:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by astro \* > \*\*I know for a **fact** that several Mexican restaurants in my area will recycle uneaten and unbroken Nacho chips back into nacho baskets for the next group of customers so long as the “recycled” chips are not too stale to be detected. \*\* Just out of curiosity – how do you know this fact? Did you see it happen at each of these restaurants? Did you read the health inspector’s report? I ask because this sounds suspiciously like the “XX Chinese restaurant just got shut down for serving dog meat!” rumor that pops up around every single Chinese restaurant that closes. I’m wondering if you have an accurate source of information. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2002, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/42 "2002-04-21T16:17:40Z")
Plus, we no longer donate unused food because people could sue us if something happens to them when they eat it. It ain’t worth the risk. I used to eat at a very fancy & expensive buffet & I saw them throw the leftover food at the buffet out & I was asking them why they did that & they said the same thing I said above. ---
**Author:** ![Mandarax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@Mandarax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mandarax)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2002, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/43 "2002-04-21T16:27:54Z")
From [HoustonChronicle.com](http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/foodtalk/archive/615506): > [@](#): > > The reuse of bread is an industry-wide practice. I’m sure that some restaurants explicitly instruct their busboys to throw out all that unused bread-which amounts to 50%–and maybe some places actually do it. But when it’s busy, and the busboy is crumbing tables, emptying ashtrays, refilling water glasses, making espresso and cappuccino, hustling dirty dishes to the dishwasher – and he sees a basket full of untouched bread-most times he’s going to use it. This is a fact of life. This doesn’t bother me and shouldn’t surprise you. Okay maybe once in a while some tubercular hillbilly has been coughing and spraying in the general direction of that breadbasket you might find that prospect upsetting. But you might just as well avoid air travel, or subways, equally dodgy environments for airborne transmission of disease. Eat the bread. This quote is from [_Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly_](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060934913/qid=1019406356/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-4827827-5639069) by Anthony Bourdain. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2002, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/44 "2002-04-21T17:03:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by DanielWithrow \* > \*\* > > Just out of curiosity – how do you know this fact? Did you see it happen at each of these restaurants? Did you read the health inspector’s report? > > I ask because this sounds suspiciously like the “XX Chinese restaurant just got shut down for serving dog meat!” rumor that pops up around every single Chinese restaurant that closes. I’m wondering if you have an accurate source of information. > > Daniel \*\* Why is this so tough to believe? It falls directly into the category of re-using breads and rolls which is SOP in may smaller restaurants and would be even more difficult to detect as bread will go (usually) stale faster than chips. In any case as to sources, several of the people I know are parents of children who work as waitstaff at local Mexican themed restaurants (among others) and those that worked at single owner, non-chain restaurants all have commented on this being SOP when we have dined out. In addition I am **directly** acquainted with one of these children who is a friend of my daughter and (when I asked her about this) she directly confirmed that the remaining, unmolested nacho chips in a basket will make a U turn into and out of the kitchen back onto a new customers table so long as they are passably fresh. Interestly, this is probably one of the best restaurants in town and one of my favorite places to dine. As a last note in terms of practical experience, there are several times (mostly on slow nights) I have had to send back an obviously stale (but re-heated) basket of nachos that was at least an hour or two old. It’s possible that this was simply a left over basket that never made it out of the kitchen, but the fact that they have the cojones to let a basket sit aound this long and then serve it to me as “fresh” doesn’t give me lot of confidence that this little basket wasn’t entertaining someone else’s table an hour or so ago. ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2002, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/45 "2002-04-21T18:47:56Z")
I worked in several Mexican restuarants back in College, and never once say nacho chips being reuised, why should we? There’s a whole warmer full of them in the bus station, the kitchen is making about a ton of them each shift, it’s much easier just to dump the unused or partially used basket in the trash. Nachos are cheap and easy to make, there’s going to be no apreciable savings from reusing a few chips. The same goes for salsa. ---
**Author:** ![Avumede](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/avumede/32/7235_2.png) [@Avumede](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Avumede)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2002, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/46 "2002-04-22T03:29:42Z")
Also, many (most? all?) Chinese restuarants will reuse leftover white rice to make fried rice. I’m sure this probably applies to those red bowls of pure rice that people dish out from, they almost certainly aren’t taking rice from a rice plate. I say more power to them. I don’t like to see food thrown away. As long as it’s reasonable to assume that no one has contaminated it, and as long as it is recooked in some way, I think it’s much better to reuse rice in this way than to throw it out. ---
**Author:** ![Myron\_Van\_Horowitzski](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@Myron\_Van\_Horowitzski](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Myron_Van_Horowitzski)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2002, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/47 "2002-04-22T18:03:08Z")
We did the ketchup thing, but we always tried to keep track of putting the old on top of the new, and as **jinwicked** said, we went through it all pretty fast anyway. Wrapped crackers, butter and cream we reused, as long as it was still in the basket or bowl we served it in. Bread was supposed to be tossed, but if the napkin wrapper looked untouched I think it sometimes got set out again . **Mike H** , to comment on your question: If it’s like the place I used to work in, they were being chintzy, and most likely were going to reuse some of it. The only excuse I ever heard was that they didn’t want to be liable in case the customer took some food home and got sick because he/she didn’t store it properly. Pretty lame, if you ask me. The same place had the policy that we workers were expressly forbidden to take home any banquet leftovers that were getting thrown out. It was because the owner didn’t trust us not to purposely make extra food to make sure there _were_ leftovers. We decided we may as well live up to his expectations, so (although we didn’t make extra), we swiped some anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Sue\_Duhnym](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/91b2a8/32.png) [@Sue\_Duhnym](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sue_Duhnym)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2002, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/48 "2002-04-22T19:21:41Z")
I’ve worked in several restaurants that reused bread (not half eaten bread, but unused/untouched) to make croutons. Not a problem in my book, because the croutons are baked. Marrying ketchup is SOP, there’s even a device that many restaurants have that has room for …oh, six upended bottles in the top, with a little spigot on the bottom. Other things I remember: Sunday brunch leftover bacon became bacon bits and leftover sausage became Monday’s gumbo soup. Leftover baked potatoes became potato skins and potato soup. Basically anything that didn’t sit on a customer’s plate was fair game. If there was any way for it to be reused in a different dish, it would. If not, you’re looking at an escalating food cost and a fired chef. BTW _Kitchen Confidential_ is a really good book about kitchen life, and very true-to-life. His “sequel” is also very good. Haven’t seen his program on The Food Network, though my dentist recommended it. ---
**Author:** ![NurseCarmen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5daacb/32.png) [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2002, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/49 "2002-04-22T19:39:31Z")
Two words that keep our food supply safe: Disgruntled Employees. Two words that could wreak the most havoc with our food supply: Disgruntled Employees. Luckily, the most satisfaction is derived from watching their bosses squirm. But the anonymous tip to the health department takes more initiative. It’s easier to mess with Joe nobody’s food. ---
**Author:** ![scott\_evil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/91b2a8/32.png) [@scott\_evil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scott_evil)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2002, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/50 "2002-04-22T20:32:34Z")
There’s a certain restaurant here in Montreal - I won’t name names, but let’s just say it’s on the corner of Peel & Ste-Catherine - that apparently used to recycle both unfinished pitchers of beer, and french fries. Point is, the food was always disgusting, the atmosphere skanky, and it was full of annoying jocks from McGill. I only went a few times, lured in by the fact that I could have a full meal for $2. (Now I know why…) - s.e. ---
**Author:** ![VOW](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/vow/32/3043_2.png) [@VOW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VOW)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2002, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/51 "2002-04-22T23:22:27Z")
My offspring works at a fast food place, and the SOP is that any “made” food is discarded at closing. All assembled salads, any sandwiches or meats prepared for sandwiches, pitched. Depending on the Assistant Manager present at closing, employees may take this food home. The discard policy is a liability thing, the discretion of the AM is a matter of conscience. Some of the chicken products were tough and rubbery; if we didn’t feel they were fit for human consumption, the doggies enjoyed them. ~VOW ---
**Author:** ![JohnBckWLD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JohnBckWLD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnBckWLD)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2002, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/52 "2002-04-23T23:21:25Z")
> [@](#): > > meat that turned green… Next time you go to a steakhouse, ask if you can see how they age the steak. If they oblige you, you’ll see a molding side of beef hanging in a wooden walk-in refrigerator box. The butcher chops off the green mold before preparing it. It sounds gross, but the best tasting steaks are all aged that way. I own a restaurant, and we never recycle food. It doesn’t even make economic sense to do so; the rolls and bread are dirt cheap. So, unless you’re referring to homeless people doing a little [Dumpster Dining](http://www.squarefruit.com/hoiet/Descriptions/Ryan/ryan7.html) after closing time, I can assure you it doesn’t occur. ---
**Author:** ![heresiarch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/278dde/32.png) [@heresiarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heresiarch)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2002, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/53 "2002-04-24T01:53:23Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Surreal \* > \*\*\ Are we supposed to believe that they just throw it out and make a fresh loaf for the next customer?? > What happens when they give you a great big salad, \ > \And when you are served salsa, do you suppose they make a fresh bowl for every customer?\ \*\* Lots of people have already replied to this thread, but I haven’t seen anyone address this. You seem to think that restaurants make loaves of bread, salads, and bowls of salsa one at a time. They don’t - except maybe very small restaurants. Prep cooks come in early and start making huge batches of things like bread dough, salad, sauces etc. I used to work at Chi-Chi’s. I mixed up batches of salsa in 55-gal containers. Then we pre-filled the bowls for the evening. It’s easier for a server to just grab a new bowl than it would be to try to recycle two half full bowls. The same goes for chips, rolls, salad, etc. And we had strict rules about what we could keep overnight and what we had to toss at the end of the night. Our kitchen was pretty clean. Chi-chi’s isn’t fine dining, but I didn’t worry about food poisoning or recycled food when I ate there. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelP](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/58f4c7/32.png) [@MichaelP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelP)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2002, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/54 "2002-04-24T02:45:51Z")
My reply leads to a slight hi-jack but I think it is relevant. During my college years and shortly afterwards, I worked at a total of five different dining establishments to make ends meet. These included a KFC, a family owned Mexican restaurant, and three different pizza places (one of which was a chain). I NEVER saw any food recycled beyond employees eating “mistakes” at the end of the evening. I also had a roommate who delivered for Pizza Hut who would routinely bring home mis-made pizzas that were otherwise headed for the dumpster. Before you get too comfortable though, let me tell you about what happened to me at a Chinese buffet a few years ago… My first daughter was just getting on to her first solid foods beyond baby food and I thought I would check out what was available on the buffet. The restaurant was rather crowded so I was making idle chit chat with the older gentleman in front of me as we moved through the food line. I spotted a large bowl of some kind of pudding just ahead of my line-mate and asked him if he could tell if it was rice pudding or tapioca. Without a moment of hesitation, he raised the large, plastic spoon, slurped up a healthy mouthful and declared with a smile, “Rice!”. I wish I had a picture of my own face at that moment. I was so shocked at what I had witnessed. After returning to our table, I told our waiter about the incident and he seemed just as amazed that someone would do this. Within five or ten minutes he returned to let me know that he had notified his manager and that the pudding had been removed. My point is that most restaurants don’t want to risk losing everything over the money they might save by serving up a second hand dinner roll. It is those open buffet lines you really should be worrying about. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2002, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/55 "2002-04-24T05:16:53Z")
In high school (not that long ago) I was in a class with a couple people that worked at a local pizza joint. They would regularly bring leftovers from the lunch buffet for our class to enjoy (and when paired with pies that the girl who worked at Baker’s Square brought, made for some pretty fun classes). ---
**Author:** ![ElisabethCa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/46a35a/32.png) [@ElisabethCa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElisabethCa)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2002, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/56 "2002-04-24T05:26:12Z")
I worked at Gold Star for awhile. The only reusing they made us do there was to refrigerate all the unused proportions of the spaghetti and chilli. Then reheat it the next day. We never reused food that other people touched or even oredered and didn’t touch. I don’t know if anyone did while I wasn’t working, but while I was there, I know how you feel…disgusting. I never did it. ---
**Author:** ![GusNSpot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gusnspot/32/436_2.png) [@GusNSpot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GusNSpot)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2002, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/57 "2002-04-24T05:48:12Z")
Department of health is supposed to… And It depends on how hungry I am as to how picky I am… Ever since I saw “Roots” I have been waiting for a sure thing by a wait person. They are gonna make my day. I like to sit if possible where I can see into the coffee/pop/cracker /codiment area. Won’t be needing any college money no more… Bwhahahaha !!! ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2002, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/58 "2002-04-24T14:08:19Z")
I have been told by several friends who work in Thai restaurants that they often re-use the garnish. By garnish I mean the hunk of carrot or radish that’s been intricately carved into a flower. I can believe that they’d prefer to re-use this rather than have a full time carrot whittler make a new one for each plate that leaves the kitchen. ---
**Author:** ![evilhanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba8739/32.png) [@evilhanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/evilhanz)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2002, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/59 "2002-04-24T18:41:03Z")
While in high school, I worked in a family-owned restaurant for a year or so as a cook, mostly doing prep work. There was never any food recycling going on at all - not even resuing a wrong order. We had pretty strict guidelines about how long we could keep food in storage. In a busy restaurant like ours, that wasn’t a big concern. However, the manager at one point asked the kitchen staff to reuse any unopened packets of things like butter, ketchup, jellies, and other sauces if it was obvious they hadn’t been touched and didn’t need to be refrigerated as people would often take far more than they needed. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2002, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691/60 "2002-04-24T20:35:05Z")
I worked in a chain steak house/salad buffet restaurant in high school, and food that had been served to customers was not recycled. Ketchup was poured into other bottles in the same fashion other posters mentioned (emptiest into fuller ones), and empty bottles were thrown out and replaced with fresh bottles. We bought those in bulk and went through a lot of ketchup, so it wasn’t like we kept the same bottles and refilled them all from some huge jug of ketchup. Most cold salad buffet items were kept overnight in the walk-in cooler, labeled for first use the next day. Hot items were thrown out. Containers were filled by bringing a freshly-filled one from the cooler or the kitchen, with the last stuff dumped on top of the new food. (The walk-in cooler itself had to have the shelves scrubbed down once a week, plus floor swept and mopped that often; spills obviously had to be dealt with immediately.) We frequently had to watch the buffet for items that were running low and to clean up spills, and any incidents that we might have witnessed like people eating off the utensils or dropping them on the floor would result in us replacing the utensil with a fresh one (we had a small bin behind the buffet) and running the dirty one to the back to throw onto the dishwasher conveyor. As for making salads, at our place at least we would go through a **lot** of lettuce. We had a big chopper and would soak the chopped lettuce in water a huge white covered bin (about the size of a large garbage can), which would be inside the walk-in cooler. You used a colander to scoop out lettuce and drain it, then dumped it into a fresh bin. I’d think any restaurant that served salads directly with meals would have something similar, and would go through so much lettuce that trying to ‘save’ a little wouldn’t be worth the effort. All it’d take is some ‘contamination’ from a previous customer to tip off the next person and you’d be in a world of hassle. (Even discounting things like calling in the Deparment of Health, you at the very least didn’t want to spend time dealing with p\*ssed-off customers because you had so much else to do.) After working there, I had more complaints about the food handling practices of the customers than of the staff. That’s not to say that no restaurant ever re-serves food that’s been served to customers, but I doubt it’s extremely widespread. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-restaurants-recycle-uneaten-food/104691.md?page=4)