How to fight food waste is a constant challenge for restaurants and their suppliers. Fresh food wholesalers can help chefs manage stock more efficiently, ensuring they receive fresher ingredients, flexible orders, and reliable deliveries.
As a wholesale food order management platform, Fresho helps wholesalers play a key role in making that happen.
By enabling better communication and smarter ordering, we help wholesalers reduce excess stock and unnecessary losses while supporting restaurants in minimising waste. It’s a win-win: chefs get what they need when they need it, and wholesalers improve efficiency. Our platform is designed to help businesses create better food management systems that save money and reduce waste.
Here are four ways wholesalers can help restaurants fight food waste, from ordering to delivery.
1. Use Better Order Visibility to Prevent Overstocking
Restaurants don’t always know how busy they’ll be. One week, they’re packed; the next, it’s quiet. This uncertainty can lead to overordering or shortages.
With real-time data, wholesalers using Fresho can better predict sales trends. Platforms like Fresho allow wholesalers to see what chefs are ordering so they can adjust stock and offer alternatives when needed.
Wholesalers can plan if a restaurant usually needs more greens in summer or fewer dairy products in winter. The platform enables suppliers to work closely with customers to ensure the right products are available at the right time.
The result? Less waste for restaurants and smarter stock management for wholesalers.
Trends can play a massive role in demand forecasting. According to a study by the US National Restaurant Association, ingredients like mushrooms, hot honey, and Southeast Asian flavours are becoming increasingly popular.
By helping to identify these trends early, we can ensure that restaurants get the right ingredients at the right time – helping them respond to customer demand while preventing overstocking and waste.
2. Offer Flexible Order Sizes & Delivery Frequency
Bulk orders might work for some, but many chefs prefer smaller, more frequent deliveries. It keeps ingredients fresher and helps them avoid spoilage.
Wholesalers can offer custom order sizes – half cases of produce, consistently-sized meat portions, or mixed boxes—giving restaurants more control. Some chefs need daily deliveries, while others do fine with a few times a week. The more wholesalers adapt to restaurant needs, the better waste can be managed.
Offer a wholesale food range with options designed to meet these needs while maintaining quality and freshness. By offering smaller, more frequent deliveries, wholesalers reduce the risk of unsold stock, strengthen customer loyalty, and improve cash flow—while also helping chefs avoid spoilage.
Wholesalers and venues can also call on reputable catering equipment suppliers to help manage storage and preparation more efficiently. High-quality fridges, vacuum sealers, and airtight containers help both commercial kitchens and restaurant chefs keep ingredients fresher for longer and prevent spoilage, ultimately reducing food waste.
3. Improve Sustainable Packaging & Delivery Practices
The way food is stored and delivered makes a huge difference to freshness. Poor packaging or improper transport can shorten an ingredient’s life.
But packaging shouldn’t just be effective—it should also be sustainable. Wholesalers can support restaurants by offering packaging made from recyclable or compostable materials, such as biodegradable trays or reusable crates. They can also use innovative designs like vacuum-sealed bags for meats, breathable punnets for produce, and temperature-controlled boxes to maintain a quality delivery system.
It’s also helpful to provide storage advice—simple tips like keeping leafy greens in a high-humidity drawer or storing seafood on ice can prevent early spoilage. We also see fresh food suppliers increasingly move to reusable crates instead of single-use boxes or using compostable packaging. Encouraging chefs to return packaging for reuse or recycling can also minimise waste, lower costs, and create a more sustainable food system.
Overall, better packaging and handling mean less food waste and happier chefs. The public’s view on sustainability is shifting, and companies that take waste reduction seriously will earn positive recognition.
4. Food Rescue & Repurposing Can Fight Food Waste too
No matter how well wholesalers plan, surplus food is sometimes unavoidable. Instead of letting it go to waste, there are solutions.
One option is partnering with food rescue programs to donate excess stock to those in need. Another is offering Specials in an ordering app, as Fresho does, with a discount on products that are nearing expiry.
Chefs are masters of creativity and can use day-old bread for croutons or turn ripe tomatoes into sauces. By helping restaurants make use of surplus food, wholesalers reduce waste and create value at the same time.
Fresho is piloting food waste measurement and reduction initiatives with wholesalers in several markets, helping chefs put more food on the plate instead of in the bin.
Looking Ahead
Every win in the battle to fight food waste is good for restaurants and wholesalers. The more wholesalers align stock, ordering, and delivery practices with restaurant needs, the stronger their partnerships become. Wholesalers can make a real impact by forecasting demand, offering flexible order sizes, tracking expiry dates, improving packaging, and supporting food rescue efforts.
Minimising food waste is also a crucial part of how to run a successful restaurant. With the right strategies, restaurants can manage costs, streamline operations, and deliver better-quality food to customers. By working together, wholesalers and restaurants can build a future where food waste is significantly reduced, and businesses thrive.
