How & Why Restaurants Should Focus On Sustainability Efforts

Julie Starr • June 26, 2021



Restaurants are fairly unique businesses in terms of how they operate, what kind of experience they provide, and their cultural impact. There isn’t a city or notable town in the world that doesn’t have a form of a restaurant in it, but despite how prevalent and universal they seem, they are truly highly developed and individualistic entities – or at least, the good ones are.

For this reason, restaurants can often lead the charge in terms of culture and what may be ‘in’ right now. This is why Michelin stars are awarded not only on how excellent food is and how fresh it might be, but how in-season it is, if it’s relevant to today, and how forward-thinking the entire pursuit is.

In this light, restaurants are the best place for focusing on sustainability efforts and bringing that more into the mainstream, or at the very least, they are a large part of that picture. But what could they get out of this, and how could they achieve that ideal in the first place? In this post, we hope to discuss that and more:

Recycling Oil

Cooking oil is used for a wide variety of reasons, from using peanut or canola oil for deep fat fryers to keeping griddles well-curated for the cooking of meats, it’s true that many restaurants have quite a large oil quotient as alternatives and large scale air frying installations aren’t altogether that feasible as of the moment.

Thankfully, more and more businesses are opening up that can use this recycled oil for a wide array of healthy pursuits, such as contributing to sustainable biofuel efforts. If your restaurant operates in an urbanized area, odds are you will have access to a program like this. Removing and storing the oil in containers and making sure you manage these logistics well enough does take time, but it can be a fantastic alternative to help achieve better sustainability efforts. And, of course, as a form of recompense, these efforts can be truthfully listed in your promotional material.

Cleaning

Using eco-friendly and non-toxic cleaning materials can help your restaurant remain as hygienic as possible without having to contribute to supporting unsustainable products. You may also find that using excellent restaurant hood cleaning services can help you ensure your ventilation and grease buildup are properly dealt with, thus increasing the cleanliness and utility of your daily operations. In this case, regular hood cleaning can actually thoroughly lessen the risk of a fire, too, as grease is flammable and is a real sticking point for unclean restaurants. That in itself is worth the investment.

Sustainable Ingredients

Of course, sustainable ingredients are also very important to consider. Odds are, a range of excellent farms, grocers and butchers are committed to sustainable ingredients in your local area. For instance, high-end restaurants are turning to more sustainable practices by supporting sturgeon farms that are sustainable, ethical, and still retain access to the best of the best caviar.

Opting for fish that aren’t overfished or come from sustainable fishing sources can help you retain your ethical procurement over time. Choosing in-season vegetables, organic and free-range meat humanely procured, and ensuring that all of these stocks can be replaced will help you ensure that in the end, your restaurant is a champion of these processes.

Food Fairs & Education

It can be healthy to educate the town around you. Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to ignore the priority of running your business and appealing to your guests. That said, there may be a way to combine both of those intentions.

For instance, it could be that you decide to run a food fair or festival geared towards showing off local produce and what it can do. This might help you strike a deal with a local sustainable farm that helps you sell products wholesale through your enterprise while also ensuring guests can sample the best dishes with those ingredients in tow.

For some, this might involve showcasing sustainable and organic cheeses in the local environment, or a vegan festival showcasing environmentally-friendly alternatives to certain foods. The more you can introduce these concepts, dishes and products to people in a friendly, healthy manner, the more that you apply this as a new norm, and the more receptive people are to going out of their comfort zone. That can be a tremendous achievement in the life of your business.

Reduce Food Waste

As a head chef, curating a menu that people enjoy can be tough, but making sure that you reduce food waste can be tougher. Yet if you plan for this, and use that food wastage to help inspire specials of the days or meals that can be used to help shift product, then you don’t have to throw out certain goods.

It could also be worth considering donating to food banks if you have certain items that are unlikely to sell but are close to their expiry date, especially tinned and packaged products that haven’t been tampered with. Ultimately, however, great stock rotation and avoiding the tendency to over-order can help you avoid throwing out items. Regularly training your staff to make sure they limit their own food waste (such as by avoiding simple mistakes) can also help in the long run.

Commit To Learning

Restaurants are made and supported by how relevant and present they are . For this reason, they must always focus on what their next step is, and how they can appeal to people this year. It’s amazing just how much awareness surrounding the importance of sustainability has improved the zeitgeist in recent years, and so innovations are escalating at a rate hitherto unseen. For that reason, restaurant owners and chefs should focus on learning all they can, no matter if that’s by following this website or making sure they keep on top of the news cycle or local food guides. This way, you can always commit to the best practices going forward.

With this advice, we’re sure you’ll focus on sustainability efforts in the best possible manner.

Smart Sensors, Smarter Supply Chains: Enhancing Traceability in Food & Beverage

By Julie Starr • June 20, 2025
In today’s competitive food and beverage (F&B) landscape, traceability is no longer a compliance checkbox—it’s a differentiator. The ability to track every step of a product’s journey, from origin to shelf, is vital for regulatory accuracy and to ensure brand integrity, supply chain agility, and consumer trust. Add smart sensors to the mix: the quiet, tireless observers revolutionizing supply chain intelligence. Traceability Has a Data Problem Despite digitization across many F&B operations, most traceability systems still rely on fragmented or manual data inputs. Batch numbers, barcodes, and handwritten logs often stand between a supplier and clarity when things go wrong. This approach struggles with latency and scale. When contamination or delays occur, root cause analysis is slow, costly, and damaging. Smart sensors shift this paradigm by embedding real-time, contextual intelligence into every stage of the supply chain . Whether monitoring humidity in transit or recording fill-level precision in bottling plants, they remove the guesswork by turning physical conditions into structured, time-stamped data. From Passive Monitoring to Active Optimization Sensors used to be reactive tools, alerting operators to anomalies. But smart sensors now play a proactive role in process control. They measure, and they interpret. For example, temperature sensors embedded in cold chain logistics can dynamically adjust cooling systems or flag threshold breaches before spoilage occurs. These advancements reduce waste and loss at a systemic level. In a production facility, smart sensors integrated with PLCs can enforce recipe compliance, verify clean-in-place processes, and detect micro-stoppages in real-time. This enables operations to pivot faster and isolate inefficiencies before they cascade downstream. Trust is Built on Transparency Consumers are paying more attention to what they eat and drink. They’re looking beyond labels, expecting visibility into how ingredients are sourced, processed, and handled. Smart sensors make this level of transparency achievable —without burdening manufacturers with excessive manual oversight. By capturing metadata throughout production and distribution, these sensors create a digital footprint that’s tamper-resistant and instantly accessible. When this data is integrated with a central platform, brands can respond confidently to audits, recalls, and quality assurance challenges with a level of precision that would be impossible through legacy systems. Intelligence Without Infrastructure Overhaul One common misconception is that adding smart sensors requires a top-down reinvention of supply chain infrastructure. In reality, companies can deploy edge sensors in a modular, scalable way. Many modern solutions offer plug-and-play functionality, allowing for fast integration with existing machinery and MES systems. This is where suppliers like alps-machine.com are reshaping expectations. Rather than pushing proprietary ecosystems, they design sensor-ready equipment with interoperability in mind. This future-proofs investment and keeps businesses nimble in the face of regulatory or market shifts. Designing for Data Longevity Sensors are only as powerful as the context they capture. A smart implementation ensures the data collected can be standardized, stored securely, and accessed meaningfully across departments. This means moving beyond local dashboards toward centralized, queryable datasets that inform everything from supplier contracts to marketing claims. As AI and predictive analytics become more accessible, these data-rich environments will unlock new capabilities—such as predicting demand spikes based on real-time freshness indicators or adjusting production schedules dynamically based on in-transit sensor feedback. Final Thoughts: Smarter Isn’t Optional Traceability isn’t solved by more paperwork—it’s solved by embedded intelligence. Smart sensors don’t just help businesses know what happened; they help prevent the wrong things from happening at all. For companies in the food and beverage sector, adopting smart sensors is less about chasing innovation and more about enabling resilience, speed, and confidence in every decision.

Eco-Friendly Garden Prep: Summer Tips for a Greener Business Space

By Julie Starr • June 5, 2025
If you're lucky enough to have a garden as part of your business, taking some time to set it up for summer is a great investment of your energy. Not only will it be ready for your customers to spend time in, but you can also incorporate some eco-friendly elements into it. Many people just think about the property and what eco-friendly updates they can make , but there are plenty that you can implement in your garden. This gives you the best of both worlds. You own a sacred and beautiful place for your customers to spend their summer, and at the same time, you can do your part for a better planet. If this is the route you want to take, then you also need to consider how to do this with the different seasons. To help you on your journey, here are some top tips for preparing your garden for summer. Plant trees and flowers Planting trees and flowers in your garden is a must. It will make a beautiful scene of nature for everyone to enjoy. Trees will provide people and animals with shade, as well as provide a habitat for wildlife. More trees are needed in the world because they purify the air that we breathe. Flowers, especially if you plant with pollinators in mind, can be an excellent way to attract bees and butterflies, which contribute largely to the earth. Use natural pest control When preparing your garden for summer, you can do this more sustainably and kindly by using natural pest control. Simply by planting trees and flowers, you are likely to attract lots of different wildlife, some of which may destroy your efforts. While all wildlife should be considered, you may need to take measures. Some better and more eco-friendly ways you can do this, as opposed to spraying toxic chemicals onto your plants and into the air, you can implement companion planting, using protective nets over your crops, choosing resilient plants, using natural repellents, and encouraging natural predators so nature can do its thing. Maintain your garden Maintaining your garden in itself can make it more eco-friendly. Composting your garden waste regularly, and kitchen waste can help you to reduce overall waste and create nutrient-rich soil. This is a great cycle of sustainability. You can also keep on top of things that need cleaning and replacing, so you can recycle the materials for other garden structures and projects, and repurpose things around your garden before they become waste. If you have features in your garden like a swimming pool, then a regular pool maintenance service is going to be vital in keeping your water consumption to a minimum, as when it is cleaned and maintained, it will need to be drained and refilled less as well as using less energy. You could also consider how you can use natural purification methods to reduce chemical usage and support biodiversity right in your backyard. Your garden is just an eco-friendly project waiting to be built. Use these top tips to help you get started.