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UK restaurants are running on margins of 4–7%. Independents often sit at the lower end. In that environment, there is very little room for losses that could be avoided. Food waste is one of them.

You run the stocktake. The numbers don't match. There's a gap between what the stock should be and what's actually on the shelf — and there it is again, the same as last month, and the month before that. Most operators have learned to live with it. A bit of variance is "normal." It gets written off as shrinkage, wastage, the cost of running a busy bar.