Will Lynch's Analytical Hypertext Proposal

My personal standpoint is regarding the amount of food that is wasted in the restaurant industry, (based solely on my experience working at a restaurant.) Working at this place gave me a glimpse of how the kitchen worked. Food was rarely prepared as it was ordered. Based on previous sales, this restaurant prepared sauces and dishes in large quantities in hopes that they had prepared enough. This increases the efficiency of a restaurant since many things don’t have to be cooked as it gets ordered; otherwise a restaurant is considered “slow” or the “food took too long to come”. This means that on a given night there will ALWAYS be food that is wasted. Yes, plenty of things can be stored, but certain things just can’t be kept. For example: Sausages can pretty much be kept forever but if a roasted pork knuckle isn’t eaten that night, then it’s going in the trash. My conflict here is how much perfectly good food goes to waste. Not half eaten food scraps, but both uncooked and cooked food that is simply thrown away. Buying food in bulk at wholesale prices must not cost all that much in relation to rent and labor considering that they throw so much of it away. My conflict here is how much good all this food can do at say, at a homeless shelter. I’m sure a restaurant doesn’t want to openly admit how much of their inventory goes to waste, but maybe all it takes is a few restaurants to step up and be willing to admit that there is extra food that could benefit someone.

Of course nothing is this simple, I’m sure there are plenty of reasons why so much food goes to waste. There is my point of view based on my observations. There is the restaurants point of view. Locally, people who are in need of food, people who are homeless should have a stake in what happens to the wasted food. Globally, people living in poverty all around the world could benefit so much from all the food wasted all around the world. My fifth stakeholder is a theoretical one. Why aren’t there organizations that coordinate an effort to pick up a restaurants wasted food? If it’s of no trouble to a restaurant and it is kept discreet, I’m sure a restaurant would agree.