With our focus on fresh ingredients and making our food to order every day, we have developed an efficient food distribution and operation system to enable our operations to run smoothly. It also means we rarely have significant leftovers to dispose of or donate. We’re committed to further minimizing our waste and developing food waste solutions that will help protect our environment.
U.S. Food Loss and Waste 2030 Champion
In 2019, Wendy’s committed to aim to reduce food loss and waste by 50% by 2030 in Company-operated restaurants in the U.S. This aligns with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agency’s national goal, set in 2015, for food businesses and organizations.
In 2020, Wendy’s partnered with the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio to pilot a food waste diversion program in Columbus, Ohio. This pilot program will be valuable to help us optimize our approach to restaurant food waste diversion and proper procedures and training for the team. Using what we’ve found, Wendy’s and the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio are jointly exploring how waste diversion approaches might work for Wendy’s at scale.
As part of our commitment to quality, Wendy’s assesses our products at our Restaurant Support Center. Continuous improvement projects have reduced the product volume we receive to sample, and unused ingredients that remain after sampling are donated to charitable causes. Our Quality Assurance Kitchen, Innovation Test Kitchen and Wendy's Four Corner Café regularly donate unused product samples to the Mid-Ohio Food Collective and Plain City Food Bank.
Our Company-operated and franchised restaurants in the U.S. and Canada work with Darling Ingredients’ service brand DAR PRO Solutions to convert used cooking oil from our fryers into renewable diesel fuel, an energy source that emits up to 85% less greenhouse gas compared to petroleum diesel. In 2021, we converted more than 22 million pounds of used cooking oil into 2.6 million gallons of renewable diesel in the U.S. and nearly 2.4 million pounds of used cooking oil into renewable diesel in Canada.