Overall, food waste–reduction efforts in the surveyed siteswere highly successful in lowering the amount of food waste.Restaurants achieved an average 26 percent reduction offood waste by weight over a 12-month time frame. Over threeyears the average site reduced food waste by weight by 58percent, meeting the United Nations Sustainable DevelopmentGoal 12.3 target of halving food waste. In addition, many sitemanagers prioritized reduction efforts based on the likelyeconomic gain from the reduction (versus an interest inreducing the total weight of waste). Put simply, the economicloss is greater when throwing away products that cost moreper kilogram (for example, beef versus potatoes), and manymanagers prioritized reduction efforts accordingly.According to interviewees, one way that site managers evaluatethe financial effectiveness of their food waste–reduction effortsis to calculate how much the cost of food waste changed as apercentage of COGS (cost of goods sold), also referred to as“food spend.” To illustrate, suppose a restaurant spends $100procuring the food (for example, whole food ingredients) it