Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
AKADEMIK GIDA, cilt.19, sa.1, ss.38-48, 2021 (Scopus)
The conversion of foods originally produced for human consumption into garbage leads to the waste of foods, time, energy, labor, money and natural resources spent during the production and consumption cycles. Unless the waste in this process is taken under control, it will not be possible to prevent wastes and to adopt the understanding of sustainable production and consumption. In this study, one of the qualitative research methods, an interview technique is used to determine food wastes in restaurants and their management. A semi-structured interview form was created as a data collection tool, and data were analyzed by a descriptive analysis method and a numerical method. The sample of the study consisted of 29 restaurants in Istanbul. Results indicated that more than half of the enterprises (58.6%) stated that they followed up their wastes. Almost all of the participants did not have any detailed information about food wastes. The majority of the respondents (79.3%) stated that the highest amount of waste was produced in the service department of restaurants. 68.9% of the participants stated that the most common waste group was vegetables. Regarding the management of food wastes, all participants stated that oils were collected for biodiesel production, and 82.7% stated that they reused food leftovers in meal production (vegetable juice, soup, sauce etc.) in various ways. It was determined that food wastes generated in kitchens were mostly caused by factors such as customer expectations (31.1%) and personnel carelessness (21%). It can be stated that the reason for food wastes produced on restaurant plates is that customers order more than they need. Along with these results, some solutions were also proposed to reduce food waste.