How Restaurants in Europe Are Handling Food Waste

Here are some great examples of restaurants in Europe finding ways to combat food waste.

by Eros Casula & Antonello Vilardi

Originally published by RETAIL WATCH.

In Copenhagen, RUB & STUB is a non-profit restaurant (part of the circuit Retro) withdrawing the surplus production by industry and retailers in Denmark. The mission is to identify clearly what food to recover and ban that has expired. In fresh produce there are retired pieces uncalibrated, residues in meat cuts, and so on. Excess production are saved, and the same goes for the unsold promotions. All people who work from Rub & Stubs are volunteers, from the chefs to the waiters. 

In the UK, at Leeds, is a restaurant called PayAsYouFilCafè (therefore “pay what you want”). The menu changes every day, thanks to the withdrawal of lots of seasonal food no longer useful for sale nor for industry or for distribution. It happens that even rock stars are among the providers and bring the remains of their feasts (every now and then comes the real caviar). 

In Milan (Italy), the group Pellegrini opened the restaurant “RUBEN A 1 EURO.” It is another type of initiative, dedicated to those in need, but Pellegrini is a group of restaurants that will surely think of recovery of food.