Restaurant Reduces Waste Costs by 25% in Year One

A rapidly expanding multistate restaurant brand is on a mission to make high-quality food more accessible to everyone. Facing rising operational costs across locations, they needed an innovative solution to streamline their waste and recycling services without compromising their high standards.

Challenges

• Inconsistent services and pricing: Using various waste haulers across multiple locations and states resulted in ineffective communication and unpredictable costs, with invoices varying widely month to month.

• Lack of transparency: they didn’t know if they were receiving better or worse rates than other restaurant chains with approximately 40 locations.

• Limited ability to scale: While the brand is growing, they didn’t have enough locations to negotiate competitive rates with each hauler.

• Disparate systems: Sales and inventory data were siloed, leaving them without all the information necessary to optimize their waste hauling decisions.

• Slow service resolution: Wait times for addressing service issues and setting up new locations were too long, impacting the efficiency of their operations.

Solutions

• Proprietary data analytics and strategy: Sourgum’s SaaS platform enabled a comprehensive cost analysis, delivering a data-driven strategy resulting in a 20% reduction in pickup frequency per location and a flat monthly invoice with no unexpected variations.

• Unified haulsourcing platform: Using the Sourgum solution to manage reverse auctions within their curated network of 5,000+ trusted vendors, they secured the best available pricing while ensuring reliable, consistent, and high-quality service.

• Tailored waste solutions: In response to higher-than-anticipated traffic at new locations, Sourgum provided custom solutions to address their evolving needs on the fly.

• OCC recycling program: Sourgum’s high-density old corrugated containers (OCC) recycling initiative reduced pickup frequency, diverting 600 pounds of OCC per restaurant per month from landfills which resulted in 1,200 pounds of carbon reduction, all while lowering costs.

• Streamlined onboarding and real-time tracking: Sourgum’s proprietary management system enabled seamless coordination and real-time updates, resulting in a 60% reduction in issue resolution time (5 to 2 days).

Results

• 25% in cost savings during the first year, representing a $107,000 reduction in waste service costs.

• 252,000 pounds of waste diverted from landfills annually through OCC recycling.

• 75% reduction in setup time with new locations being setup in one week instead of four.