Reducing food waste in restaurants, is it possible? Leftover meals abound in dumpsters, but in Italy the practice of doggy bags-rooted in the U.S. for decades-still struggles to take off. Here then is Rimpiattino, a cute container that should convince even the most reluctant patrons to take home uneaten food.
It starts with the first 1,000 restaurants, at the initiative of Fipe (Italian Federation of Public Establishments) and Comieco (National Consortium of Paper and Cardboard Recovery and Recycling).
Replaced in a thousand restaurants
The cardboard containers (pictured on the cover) Rimpiattino were completed at the end of 2018, Fipe tells Great Italian Food Trade. Delivery to the 1,000 participating restaurants in 11 Italian cities begins in January 2019. (1) A drop in the bucket, considering that there are about 125,000 Italian restaurants. (2) But still useful, especially if capable of activating the emulation effect.
The Doggy Bag of Shame?
According to interviews conducted by Fipe, 69 percent of restaurateurs say customers rarely ask to take away leftover food and wine, even though they can rely on the aluminum containers provided free of charge by the restaurant. According to the hosts, customers abandon food that is still good because of embarrassment (55 percent), inconvenience (19.5 percent) or indifference (18.3 percent).
As always, questioning ‘the other side’ helps to better understand phenomena. Regarding the practice of Doggy Bag, a survey commissioned in 2015 by Comieco from Last Minute Market on the issue of food waste in the restaurant industry provided a different picture. True that only 10% of those who frequent restaurants usually take home leftovers (another 4 in 10 do so occasionally). But in addition to customers’ embarrassment, the lack of availability of restaurateurs emerges (less than 40 percent are) and in 15 percent of cases the lack of the right container. More recently, Waste Watcher 2017 shows that the Doggy Bag is judged useful against food waste by 80% of Italians.
Remix and menu
A campaign to reduce restaurant waste is not unheard of in Italy. Already at the time of Expo 2015, Comieco-along with Slow Food and a team of professionals-had been working with Doggy Bag – If I Leftover Eat Me.. With good results in more than 200 restaurants in Milan, Varese, Bergamo and Rome.
Now Rimpiattino tries again. A name devised by the Roman restaurant Duke’s and selected in the competition organized by Fipe and Comieco, because it is‘evocative of the Italian tradition of ‘rimpiattare,’ that is, reworking leftovers from the day before.’
New Year’s resolutions in RistorAction. Hoping that the category will continue on the path of improvement and not end up ‘playing catch-up,’ this time in the sense of shirking its responsibilities. Committing to two essential menu news items:
– the presence of allergens in each and every dish (dutiful and crucial information for the health of allergic consumers),
– Theorigin of the meats.
Notes
(1) Aosta, Turin, Ferrara, Ancona, Perugia, Rome, Varese, Vicenza, Bari, Florence, Palermo,
(2) As of December 2017, there were 177,241 restaurants operating in Italy, according to the Fipe Study Bureau’s Survey on Catering. The figure also includes bakeries and ice cream parlors (11.1 percent of the total). Two-thirds of restaurants are with service while take-out formulas account for 21 percent of the total.
Professional journalist since January 1995, he has worked for newspapers (Il Messaggero, Paese Sera, La Stampa) and periodicals (NumeroUno, Il Salvagente). She is the author of journalistic surveys on food, she has published the book "Reading labels to know what we eat".
