NPR

Toronto Restaurant Fights Waste By Chopping Menu Prices Till Food Is Gone

Every Sunday, Farmhouse Tavern plans how to sell out of perishable food and open bottles of wine so it can shut up shop with an empty refrigerator for the next three days, when it is closed.
Farmhouse Tavern in Toronto has found a way to turn quiet Sundays, which often lead to either throwing away food or freezing it, into a way to sell out of menu items.

It's 3:51 p.m., and chef Ashley MacNeil is busy planning how to run out of food. Sunday brunch service has ended at Toronto's Farmhouse Tavern, and she has already cubed and deep-fried the morning's excess biscuits into croutons to adorn tonight's house salad. Now she's fretting over an excess of shaved Brussels sprouts, which isn't something she wants to freeze. She sighs and hopes it'll be a big salad night.

In a black wool hat and maroon T-shirt, MacNeil eyes the shimmering skin-on fillets of trout. Fourteen will be enough for tonight's Fish Dish entree, she decides, and she asks one of her cooks to double wrap and freeze six, which she'll later cure into gravlax. "You want to run out, but

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from NPR

NPR1 min read
Deadline Extended: NPR Student Podcast Challenge entries are now due May 31
Entries for our sixth annual contest for middle and high school students (and our first-ever fourth grade competition) are now due Friday, May 31 at midnight E.T.
NPR2 min read
GameStop Surges After Meme Stock Investor 'Roaring Kitty' Resurfaces Online
Shares in the video game retailer more than doubled at one point after a prominent meme stock investor made his first online posting in about three years.
NPR3 min readAmerican Government
Biden's National Monument Expansion Applauded By Allies, But Big Obstacles Loom
President Biden dramatically expanded two national monuments in California. But there are growing concerns that federal land managers are struggling to manage existing monuments designated since 2016.

Related Books & Audiobooks