Whether it’s Christmas, Kwanzaa, or Hanukkah, good food is the one thing that unites us all.

But with these festivities comes a challenge: recent research suggests we each generate an average of 650 kg of extra CO₂ emissions and 30% more waste during the festive season. For restaurants, this translates into higher food costs, overflowing bins, and margins that take a hit right when you’d expect them to soar.

The restaurants that thrive during the holidays aren’t the ones with the biggest orders or the most ambitious menus. They’re the ones that forecast smarter, prep tighter, and track every kilo that hits the bin. They’ve built systems that turn unpredictable demand into manageable, profitable service.

What are the main causes of food waste in restaurants?

Holiday waste doesn’t stem from a single failure. It builds up across multiple touchpoints in your operation.

Demand fluctuates more than usual, making accurate forecasting harder. Menus get more complex with seasonal specials and higher expectations. Teams prep for worst-case scenarios to avoid running out. Storage gets crowded and less organized. And without clear visibility into what’s actually hitting the bins, it’s hard to know where adjustments would make the biggest difference.

The root causes, fluctuating covers, ambitious prep, storage bottlenecks, and lack of tracking are predictable. Once you know where waste originates, you can address it directly.

12 Strategies to lower your holiday food waste

Potentially, much of this season’s prep happened earlier in the year, and choices made during then have a big impact on how much waste kitchens generate.

But with a bit of structure before the rush, teams can keep food waste in check while still delivering a great guest experience and without slowing down service.

Forecast by service type, not total covers

Total cover counts don’t tell the full story. What really matters is how guests eat during each service period and through which channels. Whether that’s a breakfast buffet versus an à la carte dinner, or banqueting compared with walk-in lunch service.

To understand this, break your forecast down by meal period and start with last year’s data if possible.

But don’t stop at volume alone. Look closely at what sold through each format and what came back untouched. If you ran a carving station, did guests take full portions or just a few slices? Did the salad bar empty out, or was it still half full at close?

That level of detail shows you where to scale back and where to push forward. It also helps surface meaningful patterns: perhaps Christmas Eve dinner performs better à la carte than as a buffet, or New Year’s brunch attracts more walk-ins than reservations.

When you understand exactly how demand breaks down, you can prep with precision rather than playing it safe and overproducing.

Adapt your inventory based on food waste

Your ordering should respond to what you’re actually using, not what you assumed you’d need. When you’re consistently binning half your brussels sprouts after Boxing Day service, that’s your signal to adjust next year’s order.

To figure this out, start by tracking waste by category: proteins, produce, dairy, and bakery. Cross-reference that with what you ordered. The gap between the two shows you exactly where your money’s going. This doesn’t mean cutting quality or undersupplying your kitchen. It means ordering smarter based on real usage patterns.

For example, if turkey crown usage drops after the first few holiday services, scale back through New Year’s. If cream-based soups aren’t moving, swap them for something guests actually want. When your inventory adapts to actual demand rather than estimated demand, you keep your walk-in lean and your costs predictable.

Store produce in the right conditions

Storage done right extends your food’s shelf life. Storage done poorly turns fresh ingredients into waste before you get a chance to use them. Here are some best practices:

• Root vegetables like potatoes, onions, and squash need cool, dark, dry spaces, not your walk-in fridge, where moisture builds up.
• Leafy greens and herbs need high humidity and cold temperatures.
• Tomatoes, citrus, and stone fruits should stay at room temperature until ripe, then move to cold storage only if needed.
• Dairy and proteins belong in the coldest part of your fridge, ideally below 4°C.

These rules are straightforward, but when deliveries arrive mid-prep and service is ramping up, it’s easy to stash everything wherever there’s space. That’s when ingredients start deteriorating faster than they should. A few minutes putting things in the right spot now prevents tossing spoiled stock later.

Create multiple dishes from one ingredient

The more ways you can use a single ingredient across your menu, the less you’ll throw away. For instance, turkey works in roasts, pies, sandwiches, salads, soups, and stocks. Root vegetables show up in gratins, purees, roasts, and garnishes. Cranberries move between sauces, chutneys, cocktails, and desserts.

Build your holiday menu with this kind of versatility in mind. Prioritise ingredients that transition easily between dishes, and plan in advance for how trim and offcuts will be used. Carrot peel becomes stock. Bread scraps turn into croutons or breadcrumbs. Cheese rinds enrich soup bases.

This mindset eliminates dead-end ingredients: items ordered for a single dish with no backup use if demand shifts. When every ingredient has multiple roles, you build in flexibility that keeps waste low, even when service takes an unexpected turn.

Avoid over-prepping

Prepping everything at once feels efficient, but it’s not. Prepped food has a shorter shelf life than raw ingredients, and once you’ve chopped, blanched, or marinated something, the clock starts ticking.

Therefore, prep in stages instead. Handle your mise for the immediate service, then restock as you go based on actual demand. If you’re running a buffet, prep enough for the first wave and keep raw backups ready to cook as needed.

Swap dishes using the same ingredient if needed

Holiday menus are often set in stone, but demand can shift quickly during service. Rather than letting low-demand dishes contribute to waste, be ready to swap items on the fly.

Monitor early guest choices and sales patterns during the first hours of service. If a particular dish isn’t moving, replace it with an alternative that uses the same ingredients. For example, if a festive salad isn’t popular, turn the prepared vegetables into a warm side or soup for later in the day.

This approach keeps your menu appealing, maximizes the use of ingredients already prepped, and prevents unnecessary overproduction.

Standardize portions and serving tools

Consistency cuts waste. When every plate gets the same amount of food, you stop over-serving, and guests stop leaving half their meal behind.

So one option is to use portioning tools: scoops for sides, ladles for sauces, scales for proteins. This isn’t about being stingy, it’s about giving guests exactly what they’ll eat, with the option to come back for more.

Standardised portions also make forecasting more accurate. When you know exactly how much goes on each plate, you can calculate how many portions you’ll get from each batch. That clarity flows backward through your entire prep process, making everything more predictable.

Switch to smaller pans and refill more often near close

Large pans look impressive at the start of service, but they become liabilities as the night winds down. Half-full trays sitting under heat lamps lose quality fast, and once they’ve been out too long, they have to be thrown out.

So consider switching to smaller pans. A full small pan looks better than a sparse large one, and it keeps food fresher because you’re turning it over faster. Yes, this means more trips to the kitchen. But it also means you’re not scraping kilos of dried-out food into waste bins at close.

Decide what happens to leftovers before service starts

The federal goal is to halve food waste by 2030, and holiday service is a key opportunity to make a real impact. However, excess food doesn’t have to become waste if your team knows what to do with it. Leftovers can be repurposed for staff meals or next-day specials, or donated to a local partner under the Good Samaritan law.

Tools like MealConnect make this simple: find a nearby food bank, provide donation details, and schedule a pickup. Doing this also boosts your bottom line as, under Section 170(e)(3)(C) of the Internal Revenue Code, restaurants can claim a deduction for prepared foods.

For items that can’t be donated, plan an alternative. For instance, vegetable trimmings can go to compost, and day-old bread can be transformed into croutons or bread pudding. Make this decision once, then repeat it every service.

Repurpose surplus into weekly specials

Leftover proteins turn into pies, pasta dishes, or soups. Surplus vegetables become gratins or sides for next day’s lunch service. Bread past its prime gets transformed into croutons, breadcrumbs, or bread pudding.

Repurposing isn’t about hiding old food, it’s about using ingredients at their peak in a different format.

Your guests see creative dishes. Your team sees less waste. Your margins stay intact. And you’re getting full value from ingredients you’ve already paid for.

Track your food waste

You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Without tracking your food waste, you’re guessing where problems are.

However, most kitchens don’t have time to manually log all their food waste during a service. That’s when Orbisk comes to the rescue. Orbisk’s automated food waste system can help by tracking exactly what you’re throwing away through a simple photo. No manual input or training required. Simply scan a food tray before putting it in the bin. Then get daily waste tracking insights, and you can use this information to adjust the next service’s batch size accordingly.

Consider composting

Not all waste can be prevented. Even with perfect planning, you’ll have vegetable trim, eggshells, coffee grounds, and other organic scraps. Composting helps keep that material out of landfills.

Set up a system that’s easy for your team: clearly labeled bins, simple rules about what goes in, and regular pickup or drop-off if you don’t have on-site composting. Many municipalities offer commercial composting programs, and if yours doesn’t, private haulers or community gardens often accept food scraps for free or a small fee.

Composting also sends a message to your guests. It shows you’re serious about sustainability, a hospitality trend that’s growing in importance in 2026.

Holiday service doesn’t have to mean more waste

Holiday service will always bring unpredictable swings in demand. But holiday food waste doesn’t have to come with it.

The above 12 strategies give you a framework that adapts to whatever the season throws at you. Start with the basics: forecast by service type, track what you’re wasting, standardise your portions, and prep in stages.

Each change compounds. Within a few services, you’ll see the difference in your bins, your margins, and your confidence heading into the busiest weeks of the year.

If you’re looking to know exactly where your waste is coming from with real-time monitoring that requires zero extra work from your team, let’s chat! We’d love to show you how Orbisk works.

FAQ

How to reduce holiday food waste in restaurants?
There are many strategies to reduce holiday food waste, and many of them require you to track your food waste to know what’s being tossed and why, so you can adjust as needed.

What is one way that restaurants can minimize food waste?
The single most effective way to minimize food waste is to track it. Once you know what’s being wasted and when, you can make precise changes. Without data, you’re operating blind. With it, you’re in control.

How to forecast accurately during holiday seasons?
Historical data will be your best indicator to forecast for the holiday seasons. That’s why tracking your food waste is the biggest lever for forecasting accurately and reducing food waste, especially during peak times like the holidays.