Commercial kitchen convenience

I work about 10 hours a week as a custodian at Piazza in the Redeker Center so I can have a little money on hand, being a broke college student and all. It’s pretty run-of-the-mill work. The only part of it that ever shocked me was how much food was wasted. 
   
More than once when I’ve taken out the trash I’ve made the offhand remark, “It’s a shame we throw all this food away,” with one of the employees in the vicinity usually agreeing.
   
I’m not condemning the employees of these places. That would be idiotic; they’re just doing their jobs. Maybe something could be done to change how that job is being done. Everyone knows Fast Food Service 101: always make the stuff beforehand. That way, it’s more convenient. Customers can quickly and efficiently pick up their food without burning up their entire lunch break.
   
Sometimes the food will run out and more will have to be made. More often than not, a lot of it’s going to see a garbage bag instead of a plate. There lies the dilemma. How do we keep up the convenience and efficiency?  Some foods would take most of a student or worker’s lunch break to prepare. On the other hand, unless the cooking staff is omniscient, they won’t know how many customers there are going to be and have to take a shot in the dark. We can make educated guesses off of “trends” and whatnot, but life’s funny in the fact that it doesn’t always follow a pattern.
   
We could try to take the recycling route, of course. Use food products as compost to grow more  food, grease for biodiesel, and other eco-friendly activities of that sort. That doesn’t come without its share of speed bumps. Some products don’t work so well for composting (meat, and of course grease ). Plus, I can’t for the life of me think of anybody I know that had a biodiesel-compatible vehicle.  Maybe with our environmental trends they will become more popular.  Alas, if only we had Dr. Emmett Brown of Back to the Future to make “Mr. Fusion” reactors that let our cars run on garbage, this would be a complete non-issue. Also, giving this food away in charities or shipping it to food banks is usually out of the question, because most of it is perishable and will go bad relatively quickly.
   
I don’t claim to be an economist, food service manager or anything of the sort. All the fiscal and economic consequences of any of the ideas I’ve thrown around are over my head. I just remember that old maxim of mothers everywhere, “Eat your (fill in the blank), there are starving children in Africa!”
   
We have seen enough National Geographic pictures and charity commercials to know starvation is rampant. Therefore, when I see dozens of uneaten, fully-cooked food items thrown out at the end of the lunch shift, it seems like a waste of resources that is both somewhat callous and inefficient. I can do my little part to help but not change the entire system. Someday, I hope we can get a think tank together to straighten out a plan and make food service that can conserve and be convenient. That, or we inevitably will have to give up one or the other.
 

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