Harness psychology and human nature to reduce food waste.
Having slightly type A control-freak, perfectionist tendencies is a hallmark of a lot of chefs. We are like one-person production lines and efficiency is the name of the game. This maniacal overthinking can spill out beyond the galley and into the crew mess. Unlike guest food, chefs can witness crew food being eaten; while it can be infuriating and mind-boggling to see what some people do to your food, it can also be enlightening. What disappears first? Does anything get consistently left behind? Being mindful of these things can help in many ways. There’ll be less waste and more enjoyment. Over years of keen observation, here are some of my top tips for using psychology and human nature to your advantage.
Order Matters
A chef working on a large vessel, cooking for 40 people, noticed that no matter what she did, salad simply was not getting touched. It was a big problem. The option had to be there, but why make the salad for it to be ignored? By the law of averages, there had to be some salad eaters among them. Turns out it was a simple matter of logistics. The food stations were positioned in such a way that the salad bar was at the very end. By the time someone got to the salad bar, their plate was full.
Even on a smaller scale, the order in which you place your platters matters. It’s human nature to see an empty plate and pile on the most of whatever you see first. If that’s the starchy, cheap, plentiful carb, then great! If it’s the carefully portioned one langoustine per person, not so great. It can be soul destroying to see someone take more than their fair share of something before everyone has had their chance. Give your line-up a bit of thought and put whatever dishes you want to encourage being eaten at the start. If you accidentally didn’t make enough of something (it happens), put it at the end.
What’s Visible Gets Eaten
Minimizing food waste is a hot topic for chefs and something that’s often in the forefront of our minds. It is admittedly nigh-on impossible to operate with zero food waste when we’re tasked with putting out “family-style” variety. But there are certainly subtle (and not so subtle) ways to discourage food waste.
We all have the best intentions when we box up and label leftovers to put in the crew fridge. We even write the date or use a color-coding system so we know when to throw them away. The sad thing is it’s often a one-way street, with food going in just to be thrown away to make space for the next load. One of the simplest yet most effective strategies I’ve witnessed is to bring out the leftovers, stick a spoon in and put them alongside that day’s fresh food. It helps to remind people that there is perfectly good food still in the fridge and sometimes, someone might fancy what was put out yesterday more than what’s been put out today.
Smaller Portions
There are a lot of human behavioral quirks that we get to witness when we live in such close quarters. I call one of these quirks “the curse of the last portion.” No one wants to touch it. It’s either psychologically bad juju, or no one wants to be the one who has to wash the plate.
How to get around this phenomenon? Just keep cutting the last slice of banana bread/cake/cookie into tiny pieces, put it on a different, smaller plate and — poof — no longer cursed, it magically disappears.
Put Something in a Bowl
This one’s from the stews, for the stews. I often get gifted unidentifiable chocolate that the interior would like to be rid of. While I love to get creative with my bakes, a very effective way to get rid of any snack is to remove it from its packaging, place it in a bowl and leave it in the crew mess. It really doesn’t make any difference that nobody has been actively seeking this food for the past year. The fact that it’s easily presented means it is guaranteed to be eaten.
Keep Them Guessing
Never over-promise and under-deliver. It might just be me who experiences this, but whenever I get excited about something and tell crew my grand plan, it invariably goes horribly wrong. So to avoid questions that make you feel bad about yourself, keep things vague and steer clear of the curse of expectation.