Servings and Emission Savings Case Study

The Business Problem

The carbon in a dish's ingredients is only part of the story. A kitchen serving hundreds of plates a week also has emissions from transport, from food left on the plate, and from how that waste is disposed of. Caterers wanted to see the full weekly picture for each dish, and to know which practical changes would make the biggest difference, without building their own models.

The Solution

wildesoft.net added a servings stage to every dish. Users enter how many servings they make each week, how many plates a kilogram of the dish provides, how much plate waste they see, and where that waste ends up, from landfill to an anaerobic digester. The tool adds plate waste, transport and disposal emissions to the ingredient figure and shows the weekly total as a chart. Settings are remembered, so the next calculation starts from the last one.

An "optimise emissions" step then shows the most that could be saved, broken down into individual actions. Users can pick the actions that suit them and try their own "what if" scenarios, such as cutting plate waste by 10% or switching disposal method, and see the effect straight away. Early versions asked AI to work out the weekly figures; these were rebuilt so that every calculation runs within the tool itself and follows the master spreadsheet, so the results are exact and repeatable.

The Result

Caterers now see the real weekly impact of each dish they serve, and which changes would reduce it most. Decisions about menus, waste and disposal can be made on clear figures rather than guesswork.

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