The IDB #SinDesperdicio initiative and the role of restaurants: myth vs reality

What is #SinDesperdicio and why should a restaurant owner care

#SinDesperdicio is a regional Grupo BID platform that connects the public sector, private sector, academia and civil society to attack food loss and waste (FLW) in Latin America and the Caribbean, the region that proportionally throws away more food per person than any on the planet. For an owner this is not philanthropy: it is access to a framework that multilateral banks endorse. The backdrop is heavy: 181.9 million people in the region cannot afford a healthy diet, per the FAO (SOFI 2024), while the gastronomic MIPYME —the sector's backbone, with 581,530 establishments in Mexico alone and roughly 2 million jobs (INEGI/CANIRAC 2022)— throws out product it already paid for. The first deliverable of this guide is understanding that every unmeasured kilo wasted is evaporated working capital. I have seen it in dozens of kitchens: food cost spikes and nobody knows why. That is where the method begins.

Step 1: set your baseline by weighing waste for seven days

Set your baseline by weighing all waste for seven consecutive days, split into two labeled bins: pre-consumer (kitchen) and post-consumer (customer's plate). Measurable deliverable: a table of kilos per day and per category, plus the peso cost of that product from your purchase invoices. Without this number there is no demonstrable reduction and no access to circular-economy instruments; multilateral banks require a verifiable baseline before financing. An average restaurant discovers here that it throws away between 4% and 10% of what it buys, pure food cost hidden inside every plate. With 41.4% of Mexico's occupied workforce in micro-enterprises (INEGI, Economic Census 2024), we are talking about thousands of kitchens without this figure. Weigh with a $300 scale, do not eyeball it: «I think we throw away little» is exactly the intuition the method destroys. By the close of day 7 you hold your evidence.

Step 2: classify waste into pre-consumer and post-consumer

Classify every gram of waste as pre-consumer or post-consumer because each is attacked with a different lever and confusing them wastes effort. Pre-consumer is what dies in preparation: trim, overproduction, spoilage in the cooler, line errors; it is fought with menu engineering and tighter purchasing. Post-consumer is what the customer leaves on the plate; it is fought with portion size and dish redesign. Deliverable: two clear percentages —what fraction of your total waste is pre and what is post— with their associated cost. This cut is the one most owners skip, and that is why they fail: they donate more or buy less without knowing where the cash bleeds. In a context where SMEs are roughly 90% of firms and more than 50% of global employment (World Bank, SME Finance), this precision decides whether the business survives or collapses from runaway food cost. Turn your waste kilos into pesos using real purchase cost and set an explicit target aligned with SDG 12.3: halve food waste by 2030.

Step 3: turn kilos into pesos and set an SDG 12.3 target

Deliverable: a monthly amount of money thrown away and a numeric reduction target at 6 and 12 months, written down, not kept in your head. Here waste stops being environmental sentiment and becomes a line in the income statement. As Diego F. Parra often repeats at Masterestaurant, the mistake I see again and again is treating waste as an unavoidable fixed cost when it is the cheapest margin lever there is: you recover it without touching the sale price. A restaurant that cuts waste from 8% to 4% of purchases lifts its contribution margin several points at once. With applied AI —today only 4% of the region's firms use it versus more than 20% in Europe (CEPAL 2024)— demand forecasting sharpens purchasing even further. Attack each waste type with its specific lever and weigh again to verify the intervention worked. For pre-consumer: redesign your spec sheets, adjust the minimum purchase, use trim in stocks and broths, and reassign the ingredient about to spoil to a fast-turning dish.

Step 4: attack each waste type with its lever and verify

For post-consumer: shrink the portion of the plate that comes back half full or split it into two priced sizes. Deliverable: a second week of weighing that documents the real reduction in kilos and pesos against the baseline. This is what multilateral M&E demands: not the promise, but the data series with a before and after. Family farming is 81% of the region's agricultural holdings (FAO, 2024); buying short supply chains cuts in-transit waste and sustains that fabric. Without verification there is no reduction, only good intentions. The most common mistake is eyeballing waste instead of weighing it: «I think we throw away little» undervalues real waste by 30% to 50% in almost every kitchen I have audited. The second mistake is not separating pre from post-consumer, which leads to the wrong lever —cutting portions when the problem was kitchen overproduction—. The third is measuring one week, celebrating and quitting: without recurring weighing, waste returns.

Common mistakes when running this guide and how to avoid them

The fourth is loading payroll or rent onto plate cost to «justify» the waste; food cost and fixed expenses are separate accounts, and food cost per plate should not exceed 32%. The fifth is donating surplus before measuring: donating is noble, but without a baseline it generates no evidence the bank requires. With 638 to 720 million people going hungry in 2024 (SOFI 2025), surplus matters, but you measure first, then decide. You know everything is done right when you can show five concrete deliverables. One: a seven-day baseline with kilos and pesos per category. Two: the pre-consumer versus post-consumer cut with its two percentages. Three: the monthly amount of money thrown away and a written target aligned with SDG 12.3. Four: a second measurement documenting the real reduction against the baseline. Five: a decision per lever —which spec sheet changed, which portion shrank, which short-chain supplier came in—.

Closing checklist: how to know everything is done right

If you hold these five papers, you stopped guessing and started measuring, and that baseline evidence is exactly what multilateral banks ask for to finance circular economy. That is the restaurant's real role in #SinDesperdicio: not an image campaign, but data that protects your contribution margin and the formal employment it sustains —23.2% of Mexico's tourism jobs come from restaurants and bars (INEGI 2024)—. The #SinDesperdicio method turns waste from intuition ('I think we throw away little') into a data series with baseline, target and verification, which is what multilateral banking and M&E require to finance. The difference is not donating more, but MEASURING first: without measurement there is no demonstrable reduction nor access to circular-economy instruments. The restaurant with method separates shrinkage into pre-consumer (kitchen, prep) and post-consumer (customer plate), because each is tackled with a different lever: menu engineering vs. portion size.

Where they truly differ

The one that does not measure carries the hidden food cost of shrinkage in every dish; the one that measures recovers it and improves its contribution margin without touching the selling price, protecting the formal jobs it sustains.