Ask any sustainability director at a large catering chain whether they track food waste. The answer is almost always yes.
Ask whether that data is comparable across all their sites. The answer is almost always more complicated.
The gap between tracking food waste and having trustworthy, comparable food waste data across a multi-site operation is wider than most people expect. And under CSRD (ESRS E5), that gap is no longer a quality-of-life issue. It is a compliance issue.
Where the comparability problem comes from
Food waste tracking in most catering operations is decentralised by necessity. Kitchen managers at individual sites log using whatever method is available: a printed sheet, a shared spreadsheet, a note on a whiteboard. The format differs between sites. The level of detail differs. The timing differs.
Account managers then collect and consolidate that data, investing hours of work to produce something usable. But the aggregate is only as reliable as the inputs. And inconsistent inputs produce inconsistent outputs.
What auditable data actually requires
CSRD’s ESRS E5 framework requires food waste reporting to be traceable, timestamped, and verifiable. That means the data needs a chain of custody: who logged it, when, at which site, in what quantity, with what method.
Manual processes cannot reliably produce a chain of custody. Paper logs can be filled in retrospectively. Spreadsheets can be edited without timestamps. The audit trail that an external auditor needs simply does not exist in most current systems.
The Sodexo pilot: proof that adoption works
Earlier this year, Zipli ran a three-site pilot with Sodexo Finland. Over 21 days, kitchen staff at three sites logged 81 entries, documenting 271 kg of food surplus. Usage was consistent across all three sites throughout the pilot period.
What the pilot demonstrated is not just that the technology works. It demonstrated that kitchen staff at professional catering sites will adopt a logging tool that is genuinely simple to use, without management pressure and without significant change to their daily routine. One photo, one confirmation. Under 30 seconds.
Reliable adoption at kitchen level is the foundation for everything else. Without it, no data layer is reliable. With it, comparable, auditable data across all sites becomes a natural output of daily operation.
References: CSRD ESRS E5 · EFRAG ESRS E5 standard. Zipli/Sodexo pilot, Testbed Helsinki, June 2026.
