One of the biggest costs to restaurants, takeaways, and pubs that serve food is food waste. According to Waste Managed, a waste removal firm, UK hospitality companies generate more than 900,000 tonnes of food waste each year.

With thin margins common to the hospitality industry, wasted food is wasted money and can sink a business’s bottom line.

Luckily, there’s a fix to this. And it’s probably sitting in your EPOS (if you have one). Let’s take a closer look at how to use your sales data to reduce food waste.

Where Does Food Waste Come From Anyway?

Most food waste comes down to a handful of decisions made without enough information. Perishable ingredients get over-ordered based on hunches rather than real sales patterns. Menus often carry a dish or two that look great on paper but rarely get ordered, quietly burning through both prep time and ingredients. Portions sometimes don’t match appetites. And when customers repeatedly ask for an ingredient to be left out, that could signal it’s not a popular ingredient, and thus a waste to continue purchasing.

The common thread is a lack of forecasting, resulting in wasted stock and thinner margins.

But the fix isn’t stricter discipline in the kitchen. It’s making better use of the sales data your business already generates.

How to Turn Sales Data Into Better Decisions

Good forecasting starts with looking at real sales history rather than guessing at what will sell. That means comparing similar time periods, accounting for one-off factors like weather or local events, and separating seasonal items from year-round staples so the numbers aren’t skewed.

Adjust your data for temporary disruptions and seasonal trends, and separate year-round staples from seasonal products to ensure accurate forecasting for each. Done consistently, this alone will reduce over-ordering.

What’s more, the same sales data can serve as a menu audit. Bestsellers and underperformers become obvious once you’re tracking sales properly, and dishes that generate waste can be reworked or dropped.

Pricing matters too: knowing the true cost of each dish keeps ingredient spend in check and highlights which items are worth keeping around, even if it has a lower margin. Checking competitor menus can also reveal gaps or overlaps worth adjusting for. Together, forecasting and menu review turn scattered sales numbers into a clear, ongoing plan for what to stock, what to sell, and what to cut.

The EPOS Features That Make Cutting Waste Easy

The only way to cut waste is to have good visibility into your sales data, which is where the right EPOS system comes in. Stock control tools give you a real-time snapshot of what’s in the storeroom, so you can spot best and worst sellers without digging through spreadsheets.

From there, poorly performing items can be pulled from the menu before they generate more waste, and popular ones can be set to reorder automatically so key ingredients don’t run out during a surge in traffic.

Reporting ties it all together. Detailed sales breakdowns show exactly where money is being made and where it’s leaking out, making it far easier to catch problems early instead of after a month of wasted stock.

For any business serious about cutting food waste, and thus improving margins, having a great EPOS with reporting is the baseline needed to make forecasting and menu decisions with confidence. If you’re looking to upgrade your EPOS, or if you don’t have one, contact us to discuss the options that best fit your business.