The workshop aimed to help enterprises improve their awareness of lean management and environmental responsibility, understand the relationship between waste reduction and economic benefits, excavate the optimization space of operational efficiency, and enhance the utilization capacity of food waste resources. The activities will help the Chinese catering industry to achieve SDG 12.3 to halve the amount of food loss and food waste in the areas of consumption, supply chain management and retail sales by 2030.

The representatives from IKEA, Xibei Group, Tetra Pak, Carrefour China shared best practices of food waste reduction. The experts from WRAP, IVL and China Agriculture University shared new research insights from the EU and China. The workshop focused on the four key points of catering chain operation: kitchen, procurement, service and sales (including take away). Each group jointly identified the key points of the problems faced by the enterprise, summarized, and finally selected the top 3 problems with special commonness. Experts of WRAP, IVL and Xibei Catering Group gave comments and implementation guidance on the solutions proposed by different trainee groups. Case studies and solutions from the participating enterprises will also be presented in the next catering lean management workshop.

The workshop was sponsored by China Chain Store and Franchise Association (CCFA) and IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute. It was also supported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of the Embassy of Sweden and the Waste Resources Action Programme (WRAP) of the United Kingdom.