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WACS Primary study materials
WACS Primary study resources

WACS Primary: Sustainability, Waste and Cost Awareness

WACS Primary · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

All guide sections

Sustainability, Waste and Cost Awareness

Sustainability, Waste and Cost Awareness links a kitchen's environmental footprint directly to its profit and loss. The exam wants calculations - food cost, gross profit, yield - plus the waste hierarchy applied to real kitchen decisions and sourcing choices defended with evidence rather than slogans.

Cost maths

  • Food cost % = food cost ÷ selling price × 100. The target is set by the business model, not by habit.
  • Gross profit = selling price − food cost; GP % = 100 − food cost %.
  • Yield % = usable weight ÷ as-purchased weight. Edible-portion cost = AP cost ÷ yield.
  • Portion control is the cheapest sustainability measure available: over-portioning wastes money and food at the same time.

Waste hierarchy

Prevent → redistribute (staff meals, charity, within food safety law) → animal feed → recycle or compost → energy recovery → disposal. Prevention outranks everything downstream, and anything you prevent never needs a disposal route.

Practical measures

  • Use trim: bones and vegetable offcuts to stock, stale bread to crumbs, whey to dough, citrus peel to zest or oleo saccharum.
  • FIFO/FEFO labelling, daily par checks and small-batch cooking against forecast.
  • Energy: lids on, right-sized pans, full oven loads, induction over open gas, scheduled descaling and maintenance.
  • Sourcing: seasonality, local where it genuinely cuts transport, certified seafood (MSC/ASC), and menus that use whole animals.

Worked example

Beef fillet costs 28.00 per kg with a 65% yield. EP cost = 28 ÷ 0.65 = 43.08 per kg. A 180 g portion costs 43.08 × 0.18 = 7.75. At a 30% food cost target the menu price is 7.75 ÷ 0.30 = 25.83, rounded to 26.00. The trim decision then matters: using chain and offcuts in a second dish lowers the effective EP cost of the whole animal.

Traps that cost marks

Calculating food cost on revenue that includes tax and service; costing a dish without yield; assuming local is automatically sustainable when season and production method often matter more; ignoring equipment left running overnight.