Saving Water and Your Bottom Line: Defrosting Methods in Food Service

What do you think of when you hear the words “waste stream”? Chances are you can immediately envision examples like recycling and compost bins, the emissions from a car’s tailpipe, or water running while you brush your teeth. There are, however, large opportunities in waste streams of which most people aren’t aware. Our Founder, Randi Zimmermann, performed a study on one such waste stream and you can learn about the results in the following blog post.

Defrosting Procedures in Food Service

Many people, especially those who haven’t worked in food service, may not be aware of a little-known water waste stream called slacking. According to the USDA, there are 3 ways to safely thaw food: 1. refrigeration, 2. cold water, and 3. microwave. Often, the refrigeration method can take days, depending on the size of the product being thawed. Alternatively, using a microwave to defrost food can change the flavor and texture, and it is considered the least safe defrosting method due to the potential for food to enter the “danger zone” for an extended period of time. Therefore, due to the constraints in most food service operations, the cold water method is the most widely utilized. This includes a constantly running cold water bath for any food requiring defrosting, or slacking. The USDA requires that the water be changed every 30 minutes, however, due to the fast-paced nature of restaurants and other food service operations, the vast majority of food service providers end up running water over the food constantly to abide by the USDA’s suggested food safety measures. This creates an often overlooked, but significant water waste stream for food service operators.

Who is Cactus Jack’s?

Megan Mitchell, owner of Cactus Jack’s Bar and Grill since 2001, is a leader in the Evergreen, Colorado sustainability space. As a long-standing Gold Member of Colorado's Environmental Leadership Program (now known as the Colorado Green Business Network), Mitchell is well-known for her regular contribution to local, environmentally-minded organizations in Evergreen. As a result of her participation in sustainability efforts and her leadership in the community, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment contacted Mitchell to explore avenues for greater sustainability in Cactus Jack's operations.

In late 2019, Cactus Jack’s hired new kitchen staff that noticed the use of slacking “all day every day”. As a long-time food service professional and former restaurant owner, James Webb was disturbed to know both water and money were being washed down the drain unnecessarily. In early 2020, when the COVID-19 lockdown orders were first implemented, James saw this as an opportunity to improve some of the back-of-house operations at Cactus Jack’s. He started to train other staff members to anticipate defrosting needs and to utilize the refrigeration method more often. However, in such an unpredictable environment (due to the effects of COVID-19 on the restaurant industry and the general work pace of food service operations), Cactus Jack’s found that they were still utilizing the slacking method on a fairly regular basis. In September 2020, Megan Mitchell was introduced to the Boss Defrost and decided to purchase one for use at Cactus Jack’s when refrigeration was not feasible.

Measuring Water Consumption

As mentioned above, in the Summer of 2022, Mitchell contracted Odyssey’s own, Randi Zimmermann, through a partnership with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Pollution Prevention Program. The purpose of this study was to understand the benefits of the two water conservation initiatives implemented in Cactus Jack’s daily operations. The main area of assessment focused on the operation's methods for defrosting frozen food; either defrosting by refrigeration or the use of the Boss Defrost, a water recycling device, when refrigeration was not possible.

Randi’s study discovered water savings that even she was skeptical of at first! She started with an in-depth collection and assessment of Cactus Jack’s water bills. No matter how she analyzed the data, it seemed like the decrease in water use was too good to be true. She also needed to figure out a way to account for the impact of COVID-19 on Cactus Jack’s water usage. There was a sharp decline in water use in April and May of 2020 that could only be explained by the sudden lockdown and public uncertainty around restaurants during that time. This compounded the impact of any water conservation efforts made by Mitchell’s team at the time.

How much Water was Saved?

Based on the water usage data, Randi decided to compare the monthly water use to revenue and found the same pattern, a sharp decline in sales for the months of April and May 2020 and a slow recovery over the following months. This gave her the opportunity to normalize the water usage data by dividing the total annual gallons of water used by annual revenue to generate a “gallons of water per dollar of revenue” measurement. This clarified the effects of the water conservation efforts without the influence of reduced water usage associated with COVID-19. See the table to the right for the results.

Based on the table above, you can see that the estimated 2021 business-as-usual water consumption would have been nearly 600,000 gallons of water! Therefore, these two water conservation efforts resulted in nearly 225,000 gallons of water saved, the equivalent of 37.4% of the total water use of the entire business operations. This not only saved water, but it also saved Cactus Jack’s nearly $740.00 on their water bills in 2021.

What does this mean?

Commercial food service operations have a huge opportunity to conserve water through the use of updated staff training and the Boss Defrost system when cold water defrosting, or slacking, is necessary. In fact, if just 5% of restaurants in the United States implemented these processes, we could save over 6.7 billion gallons of water each year. That is enough to fill 10,000 Olympic swimming pools or serve 60,000 households ANNUALLY. In the age of climate change and mega-droughts, these are simple, affordable solutions to a simple, but largely unknown problem.

If you would like to learn how you can implement this technology or have questions regarding this study, please reach out to our team at odysseyeventsustainability@gmail.com.