Copyright is owned by the Author of the thesis.  Permission is given for 
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 i 

Creating Food Waste: 

Journeys of food becoming 

waste in a catering kitchen. 
 

 

A thesis presented in partial fulfilment for the 

requirements of the degree of  

Master of Arts  

in  

Geography   

 

At Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand. 

 

 

 

Daniel Brian Ryland  

2015   

 

 



 ii 

Abstract 
The creation of food waste is an issue of increasing importance given 

growing concerns about environmental sustainability.  Until recently the 

food waste literature has focused on the amount of food wasted with little 

consideration 0f the practices that create food waste beyond households 

and hospitals.  This thesis seeks to consider food and waste practices as they 

occur within a catering kitchen with an aim of exploring how food waste is 

created.  

 Exploring the creation of food waste in catering occurred through 

participant observation in a catering firm in Palmerston North, New 

Zealand during the summer of 2013-14.  Information gathered through this 

technique centred on following food journeys through the catering kitchen 

and the moments of transition which occur as food becomes waste.  

Concepts of ‘becoming’ and ‘assemblages’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988) 

were drawn on to understand food waste creation, with Hetherington’s 

(2004) concept of conduits to inform how becomings take place.  

 Analysis of field notes demonstrated that creating food waste in 

catering is not a simple process, nor a certain outcome.  Instead food waste 

occurs as part of a vast interconnected web of interactions between food, 

places, people, and ideas.  Conduits exist to change meaning and value 

inherent in food.  Those conduits to avoid food waste can be found as 

buckets for pig feed, storage in a chiller to be made into a new dish, or staff 

consumption.  The use of these conduits can reduce food waste, but the 

capacity of food to enter them is constrained by the economic and material 

realities of producing food for sale.  Staff at the catering firm desire to 

reduce food waste, but time and space pressures, kitchen practices 

regarding food and waste, external regulations, and the material properties 

of food means that, while reducing food waste is desirable, it is not always 

possible. 

 

 

 

 



 iii 

Acknowledgements 
Special thanks go to my supportive and longer than should have been 

suffering supervisors Associate Professor Juliana Mansvelt and Doctor 

Carolyn Morris.  Without them the thesis, which was put together much like 

a meal, would have been served an incoherent and cold mess.  I also thank 

Katherine Reardon, Hannah Terrey, and Cheryl Ryland who each gave me 

very valuable proofreading and reviewing services.  Any errors and 

inconsistencies that remain are my own.  

 A special mention goes out to the staff and fellow students of Massey 

University’s department of People, Environment, and Planning for letting 

me indulge in the opportunity to produce this work and the invaluable 

discussions of both a theoretical and distracting nature.  It not only made 

the work possible, but much more entertaining.  

 Most important recognition however goes to those at the function 

centre for letting me share their work place for a few months.  Not only did 

they allow me to constantly get in the way, but they were always welcoming 

and kind despite my many stuff ups.  Without their willingness to share 

their time and practices I would not have a thesis. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 iv 

Contents  
1. Appetiser: An introduction to food waste .................................................................. 1 

2. A Recipe for Food Waste ........................................................................................... 4 

2.1. Prep Work: Why food waste ................................................................. 4 

2.2. Ingredients: Defining concepts .......................................................... 11 

2.2.1. 150 Grams of Food ....................................................................... 11 

2.2.2. One Heaped Cup of Waste .......................................................... 14 

2.2.3. Three Lightly Beaten Conduits ................................................... 17 

2.2.4. Two Cups of Sieved Assemblages ............................................... 20 

2.2.5. Mixing Ingredients: Shaping the analysis ................................... 23 

2.3. Cooking: Method of data gathering ...................................................24 

2.3.1. Preheating the oven: Participant observation ............................. 25 

2.3.2. Heating food: The research site .................................................. 27 

2.4. Concluding Comments.......................................................................29 

3. Entrée: Situating food journeys .............................................................................. 31 

3.1. The Place of Dining: Describing the firm ........................................... 31 

3.2. Staff at The Amber Flower ................................................................. 41 

3.3. Paths of Food to Waste ..................................................................... 49 

3.4. Concluding Comments ....................................................................... 51 

4. Vegetable Leaves ...................................................................................................... 52 

4.1. Vegetables in Catering ........................................................................ 52 

4.2. Vegetable Journeys ............................................................................ 55 

4.2.1. A Tale of Carrots: Conduits in catering ....................................... 55 

4.2.2. Conduits Across Time and Place ................................................. 71 

4.3. Putting Vegetables Aside ................................................................... 74 

5. Fowled Meat ............................................................................................................. 75 

5.1. Importance of Meat ............................................................................ 75 

5.2. Meat Journeys .................................................................................... 77 

5.2.1. Creeping Contamination: Health and safety ............................... 78 

5.2.2. Returning Flesh: Conduits of reuse ............................................85 



 v 

5.3. A Centre of Meat Cleanliness ............................................................ 89 

6. Crumbly Baking ....................................................................................................... 90 

6.1. Importance of Baking ........................................................................ 90 

6.2. Baking Journeys ................................................................................ 93 

6.2.1. The Prettiness of Pastry: Outward aesthetics ............................. 93 

6.2.2. The Cutting of Cake: Sweet aesthetics....................................... 102 

6.3. Glazed Baking Finish ....................................................................... 107 

7. A Selection of Cheeses: Discussion....................................................................... 108 

8. Dessert .................................................................................................................... 114 

9. References .............................................................................................................. 118 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 vi 

Table of Figures  

Figure 1: A view inside The Amber Flower's van. ......................................... 33 

Figure 2: Onsite lunch buffet. ....................................................................... 34 

Figure 3: Floor plan of The Amber Flower’s kitchen. ................................... 35 

Figure 4: Sink at the washstation. ............................................................... 38 

Figure 5: The Amber Flower’s steriliser. ...................................................... 39 

Figure 6: A second washstation, ‘Grand Central Station.’ .......................... 40 

Figure 7: The Baker's workstation. ............................................................... 45 

Figure 8: The Sandwich Maker’s workstation. ............................................ 46 

Figure 9: A bag of carrots at The Amber Flower. ......................................... 56 

Figure 10: A pig bucket inside the pig bucket shed. ..................................... 57 

Figure 11: The pig bucket shed. ....................................................................58 

Figure 12: A rubbish bin at The Amber Flower. .......................................... 60 

Figure 13: The skip bin. ................................................................................ 61 

Figure 14: Results of lacking skilled knowledge. .......................................... 63 

Figure 15: The main kitchen chiller. ............................................................ 64 

Figure 16: The tight spaces and overflowing food in a freezer. ................... 66 

Figure 17: Leftover food from a function being consumed by staff. ............ 68 

Figure 18: The central workbenches and ‘free food’ area. ............................ 70 

Figure 19: Coloured chopping boards to separate preparation spaces. ....... 81 

Figure 20: Meat stored in the meat chiller. ................................................. 82 

Figure 21: Pastry and meat in sausage rolls. ............................................... 94 

Figure 22: Pastry storage in the chiller. ...................................................... 96 

Figure 23: Dishes covered in plastic wrap. ................................................. 100 



 1 

1. Appetiser: An introduction to food waste 
Over the course of creating this thesis I was told by many of the large 

amount of food waste in hospitality.  Peers, those who work in the industry, 

and the local environmental educator from the Environmental Education 

for Resource Sustainability Trust, all expressed concern over how much 

food waste is generated by the industry.  During my first meeting at the 

function centre where the research was conducted, the Executive Chef 

declared I would be ‘ruined’ and ‘disgusted’ by the amount of food waste.  

The picture presented was one where the pressures of cooking dishes and 

getting food to customers took precedence with minimising food waste a 

secondary concern.  Everything that is not eaten becomes waste; off cuts, 

leftovers, excess production, packaging, peels, cores, all went into the 

rubbish bin without a second thought.  

 Previous studies have sought to find methods to reduce and measure 

the amount of food waste produced and direct government policy attempts 

to control food waste (for example Mena, Terry, Williams, & Ellram 2014 

consider the minimisation of food waste within the supply chain; 

Lebersorger & Schneider, 2014 compare food waste produced across food 

retailers; Eriksson, Strid, & Hansson, 2015 provide potential opportunities 

to reduce the carbon footprint of foods).  Conversely, the physical sciences 

have sought means of using food waste by considering the efficient use of 

resources (for example Bashir & Manusamy, 2015 give a summary of food 

waste in biocomposites; Yin et al. 2014 reflect on the use of food waste to 

produce fatty acids; Lau, Pleissner, & Lin, 2014 consider optimal 

composition of food waste for reuse in creating food).  However, a focus 

upon only visible waste and its environmental impact neglects the efforts 

which are made to minimise or avoid creating food waste.  There are 

instead multiple entanglements of people, objects, places, and ideas.  Where 

these interactions have been studied, such as households by Evans (2012a) 

and Farr-Wharton, Foth, and Choi (2014) or hospitals by Ofei, Holst, 

Rasmussen, and Mikkelsen (2014), and Goonan, Mirosa, and Spence 

(2014), the practices that result in food waste within catering has received 

relatively little attention, where practices are determined by a conceptual 

idea of how things should be organised (Shove & Pantzar, 2005).  By 

looking at how waste is created at a function centre I seek to fill some of this 



 
 
2 

gap in knowledge by examining these practices which contribute to the 

creation of food waste.  In doing so I seek to address the question ‘how is 

food waste created in a catering kitchen?’  

 What sparked the idea for investigating food waste in catering was 

reading the studies of household food waste by Evans (2011a; 2011b; 2012a; 

2012b).  Rather than accepting assumptions that households create food 

waste through a lack of understanding and effort, his work directly 

observed household practices and the reasoning behind them.  Over the 

course of this thesis I will provide a step in a similar direction for catering 

with a focus upon how food waste is engaged with in the kitchen of a 

function centre.  To achieve this I used participant observation at The 

Amber Flower1 in Palmerston North between December 2013 and March 

2014.  During this time I worked predominately in the kitchen as a 

kitchenhand where I could engage with and observe the creation of food 

waste and how food is diverted from becoming waste.   

 The conceptual lens I apply to food waste is centred on Guattari and 

Deleuze’s (1988) assemblages.  When a dish is created it is shaped by 

configuring various elements such as ingredients, time, heat, labour, and 

ideas in specific ways to create food that is desirable to consume.  The 

combination of these elements then enable specific interactions to take 

place, producing the means of change within a dish and entangling it 

amongst practices, people, and places of catering.  Drawing upon these 

features I present a dish as an assemblage.  As an assemblage a dish can be 

considered as one of many interdependent concepts.  As a dish moves 

within physical space it also shifts in conceptual space, changes occur 

within a dish, and in turn these changes reflect upon how a dish is dealt 

with by others.  Assemblage theory is able to capture the multiple levels of 

change that occur regarding a dish and thus food waste.  

 To look at the changes that occur in food I shall use the idea of 

‘follow the thing’ as presented in Cook et al. (2004) and Cook and Harrison 

(2007).  Following a thing presents a means to observe the interactions and 

points of change that occur as a thing moves between different places.  

                                                        

1 This name is a pseudonym to keep the selected function centre anonymous. 



 3 

Applying this method to a dish involves following it from the initial 

moments of ingredients arriving in the kitchen to when the leftovers after a 

function return.  For each point of change there are multiple potential 

outcomes for a dish, it could become waste, or pig feed, or be reused in 

another dish, or eaten by staff.  The practices, people, and other foods 

present within the kitchen all influence which of these outcomes result.  To 

aid in indentifying moments of change I will use Hetherington’s (2004) 

concept of conduits.  Conduits are spaces where a dish may be placed to 

become something else.  The meanings that are embedded within a food 

during the creation of a dish are able to be altered to those more suitable to 

the next part of its journey.  Following dishes through The Amber Flower 

has revealed the diverse journeys which are available to food and the efforts 

that are in place at moments of change where food can become waste or 

something else.  

 The creation of food waste at The Amber Flower will be presented 

through a metaphorical menu.  Chapter Two will contain a recipe of the 

theoretical concepts used and the existing ideas within the literature around 

food, waste, and the intersection of the two.  Then with the food prepared 

Chapter Three will be presented as an entrée to situate the research site.  

The main meal will explore the ethnographic data by presenting three 

options for the main course, Chapter Four to follow the journeys of 

vegetables to reveal available conduits and demonstrate journeys available 

for food in becoming waste or something else, Chapter Five to consider 

meat and changes to assemblages due to contamination, while baked goods 

in Chapter Six looks at aesthetic requirements.  The penultimate chapter, ‘a 

selection of cheeses,’ will draw together all these journeys to reveal the 

conduits and pathways available to food becoming waste or something else 

and the entanglements involved in creating and avoiding food waste, with a 

final dessert to complete the menu. 

 

 

 

 

 



 
 
4 

2. A Recipe for Food Waste 
The central topic of this thesis is how food waste is created in catering.  

Exploration of this topic will be done by following food through the Amber 

Flower and considering moments of transition when food could become 

waste or be diverted into something else.  Over the course of the thesis I will 

show how diverse elements of ideas, people, ingredients, and equipment are 

drawn together to create a dish and drive how these journeys take place.  

Every dish, each ingredient, all pieces of waste, and catering itself 

are shaped by a diverse range of interlinked individuals, places, times, and 

ideas of what constitutes them.  The interactions of these elements together 

enable transitions as food moves through catering.  To aid in understanding 

how these elements interact and influence waste creation in catering, this 

chapter will discuss the literature and concepts I use in terms of making a 

dish.  To begin is the initial preparation of the work space by considering 

why food waste is worthy of study and significant features within the 

literature, particularly tracing the sustainability focus that food waste is 

assigned and the gap in considering practices within catering.  Following 

this will be the ingredient list which defines each of the theoretical concepts 

I use to consider the creation of waste in catering.  The first ingredients are 

the various aspects of food pertaining to how food moves within a catering 

kitchen, followed by the chosen definition of waste as a loss of value.  The 

active theoretical ingredients are Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988) concept of 

assemblages to understand the nature of changes occurring within food that 

results in waste and Hetherington’s (2004) conduits as moments of 

transition where these changes take place.  Lastly there will be the research 

method of participant observation as informed by Cook et al.’s (2004) 

‘follow the thing’ as a means to cook and bind ingredients together. 

2.1. Prep Work: Why food waste 
Before a meal can be provided the surfaces within the kitchen must first be 

prepared.  To prepare the surfaces for creating the dishes for the menu I 

will initially consider why the creation of waste is a useful topic and what 

insights the literature offers.  What makes food and waste easy to neglect is 

that they are both of the everyday and mundane.  To sustain life requires 

constant engagement with food and waste making them inescapable parts 

of existence, but also objects worthy of study.  Separately food and waste  



 5 

have received much scholarly attention, but this has been predominately 

from a standpoint of sustainability with a focus upon measurement and 

statistics.  Where new insights can be found are the relatively recent 

qualitative and ethnographic studies looking at how individuals handle food 

waste (Evans, Campbell, & Murcott, 2013: 5).   

Food is essential to the continued existence of human life as both a 

need for subsistence, an object of desire, and a mark of distinction.  

Production and consumption of food is a significant part of the livelihoods 

of individuals, communities, nations, and the continuation of economic 

systems.  Globally, maintaining food production in-line with population 

growth is a challenge in the face of declining amounts of arable land.  

Options such as urbaculture (Balfour, 2010) and use of nanotechnologies 

(EC, 2014) are some of the many proposals which have been offered to 

increase the amount of food produced.  Other studies in the sciences have 

sought ways to use food waste for conversion into energy (see Lei, He, Wei, 

He, & Peng, 2014; Yu, Karthikeyan, Selvam, & Wong, 2014; Yin, et al. 

2014), or other products such as plastics (Bashir & Manusamy, 2015) and 

more food (Lau, Pleissner & Lin, 2014).  For instance an Egyptian airline 

company produces 726 tonnes of organic waste annually, 42% is leftovers 

which could produce 2.5TJ of energy (El-Mobaidh, Taha, & Lasshen, 2006: 

588-590).  

Reducing food waste also provides an opportunity for tackling issues 

of food sustainability and production.  Due to the importance assigned to 

food and how it becomes waste the research will focus foremost on food 

waste.  This is not to deny that other wastes that arise during the production 

of food is less important or non-existent, but instead to provide focus for 

the research (see Accorsi, Cascini, Cholette, & Manzini, 2014 and Reeves, 

2010 for transport packaging between farm and food retailers; Hawkins, 

2013 for physical engagements with food packaging; Edwards & Mercer, 

2013 for the loss of productive resources).  

The amount of food that is wasted by the global food system is 

significant.  During 2010 the amount of waste in the global food system was 

measured as thirty to forty percent of all food produced (Godfray et al., 

2010: 816)  There is 1.3 billion tonnes of food waste (FAO, 2011: 4), with a 

third of all food waste deemed to be avoidable (Schott & Andersson, 2015: 



 
 
6 

222).  In New Zealand it is estimated that more than $2 billion of food is 

wasted annually (ZeroWaste New Zealand cited in Patterson, 2012).  

Furthermore the amount of food wasted is projected to increase as 

population and consumption patterns change faster than the infrastructure 

to accommodate them, particularly in the developing world (FAO, 2014: 

50).  In developed countries the amount of food waste is weighted toward 

consumption (FAO, 2011: 4).  Studying food waste presents an opportunity 

to understand waste creation and secure more efficient use of food 

resources.  

Many discussions of food waste draw upon issues of environmental 

concern.  Not only does food waste represent food that is no longer able to 

be consumed, but its decay produces methane gas which makes landfills the 

second greatest contributors to climate change after fossil fuel combustion 

(OFEE, 1998: 15),  while water runoff from dumped food allows heavy 

metals to leech into waterways (Bulkeley & Askins, 2009: 252).  Altogether 

the global food system generates one third of total greenhouse gas 

emissions (Pretty et al., 2010, cited in Watson and Meah, 2013: 105), while 

the social cost of food waste, factoring in deforestation, water loss, soil 

erosion, impact on biodiversity, health, and greenhouse gas emissions, 

US$1224.2 billion per year (FAO 2014: 7).  These environmental issues 

create pressure for government policy to encourage more sustainable 

consumption, from backcasting presented by Pape and Davis (2012) which 

seeks to create a timeline of actions to achieve a desirable future, to the 

provision of information to help consumers use leftover food through 

WRAP’s (Waste and Resources Action Programme) Love Food, Hate Waste 

campaign.  Noteworthy is the recent gain in France which has passed a law 

to stop supermarkets destroying unsold food, instead requiring that it 

journey to a charity or other place where its value can be realised.  

The central focus of national and international food waste statistics 

from an environmental sustainability viewpoint focuses on the global food 

chain.  The global food chain represents a vast commodity network through 

which food is created, is processed, consumed, and expelled as waste.  The 

network is formed by a diverse range of industries and organisations all 

working interdependently to produce and create food.  Each organisation 

within the chain is interdependent with actions in one aspect impacting 

others (Gille, 2013: 39), but they each act individually and rarely recognise 



 7 

the impact their actions have upon other organisations or the network as a 

whole (Dixon, Hattersley, & Isaacs, 2014).  An exploration of this 

interdependency in the case of food waste in retail is described by Mena, 

Terry, Williams, and Ellram (2014).  They seek to quantify the waste each 

component link in the food retail chain produces and note how efforts to 

reduce waste in one link impacts other links in the chain.  In the case of 

fruits and vegetables they explored grading, storage and packing, and retail 

links, while for meat they looked into slaughtering, processing and packing, 

and retail (Mena et al. 2014: 148).  Their findings suggest that each 

organisation within the chain adopts a different definition of waste and 

neglects recognising the impact minimising their waste has upon other 

organisations.  An example is meat packaged during the cutting and 

processing stage.  Packaging reduces waste as it prevents damage to the 

meat during transit to a packing plant, but it also creates waste when meat 

is damaged by removing it from this packaging to be re-bagged for sale.  

Thus for each organisation to ensure it can meet its demands and account 

for its own waste, it must request and stock more food, increasing the 

amount of unused food within the chain that could become waste (Mena, et 

al. 2014: 151-152).  The linkages between organisations within the global 

food network provide a useful backdrop to consider the complexities of 

waste creation.  

Each link of the global food chain contains organisations and 

individuals that grow, sell, and transform food.  To understand how waste is 

created at any given link in this chain requires studying how each 

incorporates practices which engage with food and waste.  Lebersorger and 

Schneider’s (2014: 1915) study of Austrian food retail outlets found that 

only thirty percent of the variation of food waste could be explained by firm 

size and sales.  Instead the creation of waste is dominated by food and 

waste practices within a firm.  It is only through studying practices dealing 

with food and the factors which produce this engagement that the creation 

of waste may be understood (Farr-Wharton, Foth, & Choi, 2014: 399).  This 

need to study the practices that result in food waste is again called for by 

Sonnino and McWilliam (2011) and Goonan, Mirosa, and Spence (2013: 68- 

69), recognising that food waste is an outcome of multiple people and 

interests.  



 
 
8 

Studies that seek to discover how and why individuals create waste 

have been a recent development (Evans, Campbell, & Murcott, 2013: 5-6).  

One of the most prominent researchers in this area has been David Evans.  

His examination of United Kingdom households disputed the common 

assumption that household food waste is a result of lack of knowledge 

leading to an inability to deal with waste (Evans, 2011a).  He argued that to 

focus upon knowledge alone assumes a household without the context of 

everyday life where there is always the ability to act according to food waste 

‘best practice.’  Instead lives are messy and can create circumstances in 

which knowledge exists but to act upon it requires sacrifices or actions in 

other parts of life which are unacceptable for the households involved.  The 

desire to create more sustainable lifestyles exists, but it is still in 

development and rarely drives household practices (Evans, 2011b; 114).  

Desires of households to maintain family welfare, eat healthily, and 

consume sustainably and ethically all overlap with sustainable food 

practices, but these desires can also produce conflicts resulting in more food 

waste (Evans, 2011b).  An example presented by Evans (2011b; 112-113) is 

the intersection of healthy eating and environmental sustainability, where 

healthy practices such as cycling can also be good for sustainability; but 

conversely the desire to always eat fresh and organic food can result in 

creating food waste if it is not used before it decays.  Conduits which were 

found to be used in Evans’ (2012b) research involve gifting, handing down, 

binning, and compost, of which the rubbish bin is deemed culturally to be 

the appropriate conduit for food waste.  Journeys of food that do not lead to 

becoming waste such as through a rubbish bin require other conduits to be 

present to enable food to become something else.  However, these conduits 

can be less consistently available and often require effort and space that 

may not always be available (Evans, 2012b; 1134), such as separate bins for 

plastic, glass, food, and general waste, each bin takes up physical space and 

requires effort to sort items into these categories.  Furthermore the time 

needed for food to become disconnected from its previous meaning in 

becoming a dish for another can interact negatively with food’s short 

lifespan (Evans, 2012b; 1134).  The easy option is thus for food waste to be 

placed into a rubbish bin where it becomes waste rather than into conduits 

leading to food becoming something else. 

Household food practices intersect with multiple social and 

economic imperatives, so wasting is not simply determined by what 



 9 

happens within the space of the home.  Cook et al. (2004: 660-661) provide 

an example of papaya which is purchased with the intention to consume, 

but due to habits and busy lives, the opportunity to eat it does not arise 

causing it to become waste.  The formation of habitual purchasing together 

with messy lives shape individual actions toward food and waste and these 

contribute more to creating waste than the knowledge and attitudes 

members of a household may profess (Farr-Wharton, Foth, and Choi, 

2014).  Evans (2012a: 53) put it well in saying that “… the passage of ‘food’ 

into ‘waste’ occurs as a consequence of households enacting ordinary 

domestic practices and negotiating the contingencies of everyday life.”  

Research into food waste practices in catering is also relatively 

recent and sparse, with Sonnino and McWilliam (2011: 823) noting a gap in 

the literature which considers food waste at different stages in the global 

food chain.  Studies of food waste in catering have begun in hospitals where 

approximately two thirds of all food produced is wasted (Sonnino and 

McWilliam, 2011: 826).  Most of this food waste occurs in the form of 

leftovers on the trolley after meal times due to incorrect forecasting of the 

number of meals needed (Goonan, Mirosa, & Spence, 2013: 68).  This 

results as a catering firm needs to be able to supply enough meals for all 

patients at a hospital and provide these in standardised portion sizes.  

Similar to a household however, the lives of those at a hospital and its 

operation are messy; the number of patients can fluctuate, some patients 

may desire smaller portion sizes, or parts of the meal are considered by 

patients to be unappetising.  However, as with households, the wellbeing of 

patients is valued above minimising food waste (Ofei, Holst, Rasmussen, & 

Mikkelsen, 2014: 53).  The result is that production of food waste is 

considered inevitable by those working in the industry (Goonan, Mirosa, & 

Spence, 2013: 67; Ofei, et al. 2014: 53).  Where opportunities for food waste 

minimisation exist is in the practices, in the day to day dealings of multiple 

people between creating and serving food (Goonan, Mirosa, & Spence, 

2013: 68-69; Liwei, et al., 2013: 352).  In the kitchen knowledge of, and 

conforming to, suitable portion sizes, improved predications of the number 

of meals needed each day, and how serving staff deliver food (Ofei, et al., 

2014), all influence the amount of food waste created.  Catering for 

hospitals provides similar concepts that are evident for catering firms, such 

as the need to operate foremost for customers and profit with waste 

minimisation a secondary concern.  However the bulk standardised meals 



 
 
10 

that are served at a hospital require different practices to catering for 

numerous small functions, each of which can differ significantly.  

Other studies of food waste based in China consider the need to feed 

an increasing urban population while minimising the amount of food 

becoming waste (Liwei, et al., 2013; Guo, Sun, Sun, Lu, & Wu, 2014).  To 

give an idea of the amount of food waste considered there is an estimated 

1184.5 tonnes produced daily in Hangzhou alone (Guo, et al., 2014: 794).  

Liwei et al. (2013: 352) develops a picture of catering food waste in China as 

one with numerous interactions between places, people, and ideas; the 

focus upon only consumers or producers will not achieve a reduction in 

food waste due to the presence of interdependencies Liwei et al. (2013: 

341).  There has been no research on food waste in the catering industry 

conducted in New Zealand that I discovered over the course of the research.  

Thus this thesis will address food practices in a catering kitchen which 

supplies food for weddings, social gatherings, lunches, and dinners within 

New Zealand.  

As catering is a part of hospitality the research draws upon 

knowledge developed by restaurant ethnographies.  Food in catering and 

waste at the first and last moments is engaged with in a kitchen by kitchen 

staff.  The result is that food and waste practices in a catering kitchen 

present similar pressures to those at restaurant kitchens.  Temporal and 

spatial constraints exist in both catering and restaurants that shape the 

means of discourse (Demetry, 2013) and perspectives of staff compared to 

diners (Gaytán, 2008).  Creating and serving food is the focus for any firm 

operating in hospitality and a part of this is ensuring food is authentic and 

unique to establish and maintain a firm’s reputation (Leschziner, 2007).  To 

do this effectively requires cooperation and an awareness of the other roles 

between kitchen and serving, those in the kitchen, and functions falling 

under future shifts (Fine, 1996: 36-38).  The difference between a 

restaurant and a catering firm arises in the mobility of food.  Food requires 

mobility as it is consumed in places that are distant from where it is 

prepared.  These moments of mobility present additional challenges in 

engaging with food and waste which are not present at a restaurant serving 

only onsite consumers. 



 11 

The literature indicates that food waste is created by the interaction 

of diverse elements and decisions of the many elements both large and 

small within the global food chain.  Understanding how and why waste is 

created however requires going into the firms that make up these links and 

directly observing their waste practices.  Recent studies have provided such 

information for households, but a gap exists in the literature regarding the 

creation of waste in catering.  To consider the practices present in a catering 

kitchen first involves consideration of how food and waste are defined.  

Here I argue the main form food takes is as a dish that exists as an 

assemblage and the interactions which lead to the creation of waste are 

derived from entanglements with people, places, objects, and ideas. 

2.2. Ingredients: Defining concepts 
With the work space prepared by considering why food waste is a valid topic 

of study, the next part of creating the menu is to gather ingredients.  These 

ingredients combine together to give shape and coherency to the dish by 

forming its parts and the components on which analysis can take place.  

Thus this section expands on the ideas that inform my understanding of 

waste creation and considers how they have been used in the literature.  

The first ingredients to be discussed are the central components of food and 

waste as it is their movements within catering I follow in the ethnography.  

Next will be an examination of conduits as spaces which enable food to 

transition between different meanings and values, followed by an 

introduction to the concept of assemblages as the theoretical idea of how 

food interacts within other components within and outside The Amber 

Flower.  Completing this section will be a mixing of all these ingredients 

ready to cook the final dish.  

2.2.1. 150 Grams of Food 
To follow how food moves in the catering kitchen first requires an 

awareness of the different stages in preparing and consuming food.  Thus 

food and its use in shaping a meal is the first ingredient for this menu.  For 

any catering firm, food is its lifeblood.  Without the constant movement of 

food, from acquiring new ingredients to creating dishes for sale, there is no 

profit and hence no firm.  As food is moved, it is disassembled as parts are 

removed during preparing and cooking, time may cause decay to leave parts 

behind, and not all of a dish may be served or eaten.  These remaining parts 



 
 
12 

form an aspect of food movements through the catering kitchen.  By 

defining the forms food takes relevant to the catering kitchen, it will shape 

the bounds of the analysis.  

The literature defines food as dependent upon the practices involved 

in engaging with it, for food this is the act of eating (Roe, 2006: 112; 

Carolan, 2011).  There needs to be a material form that is acceptable for 

consumption.  However objects deemed fit for eating are filtered by 

prevailing cultural and social lenses regardless of edibility or nutrition 

(Wills, Backett-Milburn, Roberts, & Lawton, 2011: 727-728).  Different 

material compositions can produce different ideas of edibility.  An example 

of this difference can be found in Gewertz and Herrington’s (2010) study of 

mutton and lamb flaps in the Pacific Islands.   These pieces of meat are 

sources of protein, but they also contain a high proportion of fat.  The high 

fat content means mutton and lamb flaps are not seen as fit for human 

consumption in developed nations and in some cases not even fit for dogs 

(Gewertz and Herrington, 2010: 36).  In the Pacific Islands, the 

consumption of mutton and lamb flaps is a sign of wealth and they serve an 

important role in ceremony and maintaining relationships.  The idea of 

what food is thus stretches beyond nutrition into the realm of ideas.  To eat 

is an act of forming identity (Probyn, 2000), partaking of imagined 

geographies (May, 1996: 57), and creating bonds between people and places 

(Moisio, Arnould, & Price, 2004; Longhurst, Johnston, & Ho 2009).  

It is thus necessary to break down food into the components that are 

relevant to producing food at the catering kitchen to facilitate discussion 

and ensure clarity.  When catering produces food to be consumed, be it a 

fruit platter, seafood salad, or mince pie, diverse ingredients must first be 

made into a single whole.  Ingredients are objects that are combined with 

other ingredients in specific ways to create a dish.  Ingredients may be 

inedible alone as they may be dry or have an unpleasant taste such as flour 

and baking soda, or they could include items such as taro which is 

poisonous unless cooked.  By combining these ingredients with others they 

can become part of a dish that is edible and tasty.  Take apple pie as an 

example.  Among the ingredients for an apple pie are apples and flour.  

Apples are commonly consumed independently, but to make them suitable 

for an apple pie they need to be cored, chopped, and stewed to become a 

filling.  Flour however is not eaten alone, but it can be made into an edible 



 13 

pastry by mixing it with butter, eggs, and sugar.  By creating an apple pie, 

the apple and flour no longer exist independently but become two inputs 

which create an apple pie.  The process of creating a dish extracts the 

inedible and unsuitable components of ingredients to enable their 

designation as food in their own right (Coles & Hallet 2013: 161).  

Food which catering provides to consumers comes in the form of 

dishes.  For the purpose of this thesis, a dish will refer to any instance 

where ingredients are combined together in a specific manner to create a 

cohesive, edible whole.  The use of ‘dish’ thus allows a general term for 

referring to a stage of food as something to be presented for consumption, 

although used this way the term includes a diverse range of different foods 

such as chicken masala curry, carrot cakes, and sandwiches.  The whole as a 

dish then leaves the kitchen to be presented to customers.  There is however 

more than only combining ingredients together.  Continuing with the apple 

pie example, it includes more than only ingredients that are combined 

together via baking.  Apples, sugar, flour, butter, time, knowledge, labour, 

and heat are all drawn together.  The final dish is then created by 

combining these factors through cooking which draws upon ideas and rules 

for shaping what counts as food (Bell & Valentine, 1997: 49).  

A function is an event where a collection of dishes is supplied by a 

catering firm as a dining experience.  A dining experience in this way can 

take the form of a full formal meal where customers are seated and supplied 

with multiple courses.  Examples include corporate dinners or weddings.  

For these dining experiences, what food is served must match a carefully 

structured set of cultural rules pertaining to how a meal is constructed 

(Douglas & Nicod, 1974).  To fail to meet these requirements is to 

undermine the significance of the occasion and present a dining experience 

that does not meet the expectations of guests.  Dishes in formal functions 

are usually tied intimately to the occasion and are expected to support the 

theme or occasion.  Alternatively, a dining experience can be a very 

informal affair, with the focus being on gathering socially.  The food 

provided may involve an afternoon tea or takeaways such as pizza may be 

served.  For these informal dining experiences food is a facilitator which 

promotes but is secondary to social interaction.  Regardless of the style of 

function however, all dishes provided must complement and support each 

other.  



 
 
14 

 The movement of ingredients and dishes through catering is an 

essential attribute for a catering firm.  Without ingredients entering the 

kitchen to be made into dishes, no food can be produced and without the 

creation of dishes no functions can be supplied.  As food moves between 

these stages there are opportunities for creating waste, which is the next 

ingredient in this recipe.  

2.2.2. One Heaped Cup of Waste 
The next ingredient in the recipe is the waste.  Combining waste with food 

will create a base to add the active and binding ingredients to enable 

analysis.  Previous assumptions about waste in the literature have focused 

upon leftovers by consumers, but Evans, et al.(2013: 7) problematise this as 

it neglects other points where waste can be created.  It is this rarely seen 

and acknowledged waste which is created before food passes onto 

consumers which makes looking into waste practices in catering important.  

Each decision regarding food, such as where it is placed, what ingredients 

are used, and how it is made, contribute to the creation of waste.  In 

exploring this conceptualisation of waste I will first consider the elements 

that contribute to defining waste, followed by a discussion of how changes 

in the value of food as it moves throughout catering can create waste.  

Much as creating food is the result of individuals interacting with 

objects in particular ways, so is waste created.  Waste is created through 

placement of objects (Hetherington, 2004: 159), thus the designation of 

food as waste is an active assignment by individuals (Douglas, 1978: 

Hetherington, 2004).  When waste is created it is the result of engaging 

with food in such a way as to create a perceived loss of value, given the piece 

of food’s current context (Coles & Hallet, 2013: 162).  To elaborate upon this 

distinction between value and waste, value is proposed by Hetherington 

(2004: 169) to be the ‘soul’ of an object.  Without the assignment of value in 

some form, an object lacks purpose and is no longer worth keeping.  This 

lack of purpose is what results in objects becoming waste.  As an object 

loses value it also loses its identity and how it is perceived, so that as value 

is lost an object moves toward becoming waste.  For Hetherington (2004) 

placement is a central feature for an object to become waste and these 

placements will be explored further in section 2.2.3.  Creating waste is an 

assessment of when food crosses a culturally defined margin that separates 

what is worth keeping from what is not (Watson & Meah, cited in Coles & 



 15 

Hallet, 2013: 157).  Thus creating waste is not an instance where there is no 

value, but rather one where how value is assigned is central (O’Brien, 2013: 

195).  

With the creation of waste centred on loss of value, it is necessary to 

consider how value is assigned.  The idea of what is or is not valuable is 

subjective and varies across individuals, times, and spaces, so rather than a 

set, precise definition, the creation of value will be considered in terms of 

regimes of value.  Regimes of value represent a set of conventions that are 

shaped by cultural frameworks (Appadurai, 1986: 14-15).  These 

frameworks provide reasons for individuals to decide what is or is not 

valuable.  The conventions that form value proposed by Boltanski and 

Thévenot (1999, cited in Evans, 2011b: 110-111) are market, civic, domestic, 

opinion, inspired, and industrial, with Evans (2011b) adding environment 

to the list.  Each of these conventions represents a different set of perceived 

circumstances, and hence assignment of value.  

Each convention provides a way to create value in food.  Civic 

conventions derive value from supporting the collective interest, such as the 

provision of food to homeless or connecting places through interdependent 

trade networks (Simons, 2010).  Domestic conventions use the 

development of personal ties to assign value, for food this would include its 

use to create and maintain familial bonds (Bell & Valentine, 1997: 65; 

Johnston & Longhurst, 2012), link to the past through memory (Longhurst, 

Johnston, & Ho, 2009), or for catering food as a means of facilitating 

socialising.  Opinion involves value which is assigned by means of 

enhancing how an individual is perceived by others (Bauman, 2003, cited in 

Stebbins, 2009: 7).  Inspired conventions give value to food in its ability to 

express creativity and uniqueness (as presented by Tuan, 1989 and 

Stebbins, 2009), as a form of political expression (see Edwards & Mercer, 

2013), or a way for chefs to show their skill and creativity (Fine, 1996: 

2021).  Industrial conventions represent value through productivity and 

efficiency, such as the ability to generate energy to power appliances from 

leftover food (O’Brien, 2013) or producing dishes as quickly as possible.  

Environmental conventions involve value generated through the care and 

protection of the natural world, such as recycling so to reduce landfill and 

global warming.  Finally there is market value, for which as catering is a 

business first this convention tends to be the most significant way of 



 
 
16 

assigning value.  The market convention assigns value through consumer 

demand, potential revenue, and the costs of acquisition and transport; 

factors that ensure food continues to be sold at a catering firm.  Due to The 

Amber Flower’s need to generate a profit the market and industrial 

conventions are anticipated to be the most significant in avoiding the 

creation of waste.  As staff members are those who create food and waste, 

there may be some environmental conventions that develop regarding their 

own views.   The value of a piece of food is derived from the amount of 

profit it can generate.  

Beyond these conventions as stances to assign value, simple physical 

necessity also influences designation of value to food.  Examples are the 

human lifecycle as young children place high value upon energy rich foods 

which dissipates with age (Yeomans, 2006), how hungry one happens to be 

at the time (Meiselman, 2006), whether the food matches the environment 

it is presented in (Meiselman, 2006: 186), or the amount of nutrition food 

can provide.  The circumstance in which food is presented is thus important 

for how and why value is assigned.  All of these have the potential to 

contribute to what counts as value in food.  Every customer of catering 

assigns value according to their own, potentially unshared, conventions and 

these need not remain constant over time.  What matters is that value is 

assigned and there is a framework for its expression and for its loss.  Over 

the course of the thesis I will refer to value predominately as expressed 

through taste, nutrients, or aesthetics, with a bent toward how these are 

influenced by exchange value in the market.  

The potential creation of waste occurs at specific moments in a 

food’s journey where it exists in a liminal state between value and non-

value.  Tension is created between how value is assigned and the 

circumstances where this value cannot be realised (Hetherington, 2004: 

162).  An example from Evans (2012b: 1130) is a container of rice left in the 

fridge that is not intended for future use, but keeping it there is due to an 

aversion toward wasting ‘good food.’  The fridge becomes a space where the 

rice is left to go hard and dry, allowing value to dissipate until it is no longer 

‘good food’ and can be thrown away without concern.  The fridge in this 

example acts as a space where value and non-value can be negotiated and 

the tension removed.  Thus the fridge provides a space of rest before the 

continuation of a journey.  Placement in spaces of transition allows these 



 17 

identities of value and non-value to be reconciled (Evans, 2011a).  When the 

assigned value becomes less than what a dish is worth to keep, its time in 

the liminal space has resulted in its becoming waste.  What these liminal 

spaces are however constitute the next ingredient in the dish of food waste. 

2.2.3. Three Lightly Beaten Conduits 
The next ingredient to be added ensures that the food is malleable by 

allowing movement between food and waste while paving the way for the 

active ingredient.  For this menu it is Hetherington’s (2004) idea of 

conduits which will be placed in the context of how food moves through The 

Amber Flower as a journey.  These will later be applied under Cook et al.’s 

(2004) ‘follow the thing’ for the ethnographic method.  Together the 

concepts of conduits and journeys draw attention to the trajectories of food 

through catering and emphasise the moments of transition into waste or 

something else.  A journey is the movement of food through stages of 

catering as ingredients are delivered, made into dishes, sent to consumers, 

and returned.  Conduits are often spaces of rest that allow passage between 

stages by renegotiating assigned meanings.  

Conduits exist as doorways that enable passage between different 

stages of a food’s journey and allow food to journey to new interactions 

(Hetherington, 2004).  Conduits are generally established places that are 

assigned the role of allowing a change between valuable objects and waste 

to occur.  By existing within the gap between stages of a journey, objects in 

conduits can have their previous connections severed by becoming 

something new (Hetherington, 2004: 169).  The most common example of a 

conduit is a rubbish bin.  When food is placed in a rubbish bin its journey as 

a valuable, edible object for consumption begins to close as it rests until its 

remaining value dissipates.  Once this has occurred, preparations for a new 

journey can begin as food enters the next stage of its journey to landfill.  

When food is placed in a conduit which leads to landfill, the food’s value is 

allowed to dissipate so as to no longer hold value (Douglas, 1978: 96).  

Alternative conduits not associated with journeys into waste are still 

moments of transition between stages in a journey.  A rubbish bin allows 

journeys to landfill, alternative conduits allow diversion into journeys to  

places where different material and social circumstances can prevail and 

value can be realised in a different form (Coles & Hallet, 2013: 167).  For 



 
 
18 

example the conduit of a compost heap is where the value of food for 

human consumption dissipates, but a new stage in a journey is presented in 

becoming suitable for plant consumption.  Other examples include 

recycling food into energy, donating to food banks, or reusing leftovers in a 

new dish.  These conduits enable journeys where value which would be lost 

can be realised within a new set of circumstances (O’Brien, 2013: 196-7).  

The contribution the idea of conduits makes in following journeys of 

food and the creation of waste in catering is that they enable changes in the 

value of a piece of food.  Through providing a gap in a journey, conduits 

enable the removal of unwanted meanings within one set of circumstances, 

such as associations with the past, the self, and its use, to be lost while 

preparing it for the next stage in its journey (Munro, 2013).  An example is 

glass jars.  A glass jar may have been used in the past to hold blueberry jam.  

However cleaning a jar in soapy water followed by placement in an oven at 

120 degrees Celsius for twenty minutes sterilises it for new uses.  The 

placement in an oven to sterilise a jar removes its associations as a 

container for blueberry jam and opens up future journeys.  These journeys 

may include the option to go into recycling and become part of a mass of 

glass which can be shaped into completely new forms, reused in becoming a 

pot for a plant, or refilled with blueberry jam.  The oven here acts as a 

conduit enabling this break to take place.  Over the course of this thesis I 

will reveal what some of these conduits are and the journeys they enable for 

food in catering to become waste or something else.  

 Conduits as a means of advancing food journeys are not passive.  

Within a place there is a hierarchy of conduits representing different 

perceptions of value (Gregson, Metcalfe, & Crewe, 2007).  For food this 

difference can be seen in conduits used in catering firms compared to those 

in a household.  Leftover roast chicken can be remade into a chicken stir-fry 

at home, but due to food health and safety regulations this ability to reuse 

chicken in catering is not available and a rubbish bin is more likely to be 

used.  However as Metcalfe, et al. (2013) show the availability of a conduit 

itself influences food and waste practices.  Their research involved studying 

the behaviours of households when presented with food bins into which 

food scraps could be placed to be taken by local councils.  They found that 

the presence of a food bin is enough to encourage its use to occur, even 

amongst the households most reluctant to make efforts regarding food 



 19 

waste.  Conduits provide a means of distributing, politicising, and 

representing food journeys toward, or away from, waste (Hawkins, 2009; 

Gregson, Watkins, & Calestani, 2010).  

 Deciding on what conduit food should be placed in is not a simple 

decision, but rather one that requires thought and intention on the part of 

those engaging with food journeys (Cappallini & Parsons, 2013: 123).  

Placement requires the ability to classify, evaluate, and assign priorities 

between conduits given the objects and circumstances in which they exist 

(Parsons, 2008).  Attempting to place food into inappropriate conduits is 

akin to waste.  Thus knowledge of the availability and restrictions of 

conduits is necessary for ensuring they enable journeys that divert food 

from waste streams (Gregson et al., 2007).   An example is recycling plastic 

honey pots.  To maintain high quality, recycled plastic each honey pot must 

first be cleaned.  To neglect to do so leaves residual honey which introduces 

impurities into the batch of recycled plastic, reducing its quality and the 

price that it can be sold at.  Additionally the honey can spread onto other 

plastic items, potentially making the entire batch unusable.  Within 

hospitality these rules and restrictions are much more extensive to ensure 

the protection of public health (Food Act 1981: 59).  Use of inappropriate 

conduits has the potential to lead to mass illness.  Thus to guide food 

through appropriate conduits requires knowledge of the food’s material 

attributes, spaces which are conducive to them, and what conduits are 

available.  

 Throughout a journey the relationship between internal components 

of food and its external circumstances can change.  Plastic packaging is not 

suitable for composting for instance, yet without a potential market for the 

recycled plastic the effort of recycling plastic is not worthwhile.  Different 

conduits present different journeys available for food and create different 

engagements between people, places, and other food throughout the 

process.  All these interactions of people, objects, places, and ideas 

contribute to creating the assemblage of a dish. 

 

 



 
 
20 

2.2.4. Two Cups of Sieved Assemblages 
Combining food and waste creates the base food in this menu by forming 

the central components for analysis.  When these are combined with 

conduits and journeys, dynamic movement and change between states is 

made accessible to reveal practices and engagements.  To develop the menu 

items into a coherent whole, there needs to be an active ingredient to 

facilitate discussion.  For this I use Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988) idea of 

assemblages to provide a means to join food, waste, and conduits.  The form 

of assemblage theory I am using is outlined in Anderson and McFarlane 

(2011: 124-125) which is centred on concepts and the combination of 

heterogeneous elements to produce a whole.  As outlined in defining food, a 

dish exists as both a physical object and as an abstract idea, with a dish 

created by combining these ideas, rules of cooking, and ingredients to form 

a single whole.  The intention is to use these ideas to focus upon how a dish 

is made and how waste emerges from it.  I argue that each dish is an 

assemblage bound by a set of ideas and engagements that draw and hold 

together diverse elements.  As dishes journey throughout catering they 

become entangled with people, places, ideas, and objects which produce 

internal changes.  These entanglements are relationships of assemblages 

with each other that arise during food journeys, such as the relationship 

between dishes in a meal or between people’s engagement with a dish.  An 

outcome of entanglements is that they can alter the components of a dish 

assemblage by creating new internal relationships or introducing new 

components.  These interactions encourage particular changes to take 

within dishes and will move them closer to moments of transition where a 

dish may become waste or something else.  This section will expand upon 

why this is a useful way of considering food and waste, and how it will be 

used to frame the analysis.  

 An assemblage consists of a set of relationships that are created by 

drawing together a diverse range of heterogeneous elements, both human 

and non-human, with ideas (Swanton, 2013: 286).  Each assemblage is kept 

distinct from others by a constructed boundary to separate it from other 

assemblages and give it coherency.  The boundary both creates and is 

created by the practices and the relations which are adopted between 

components within the assemblage and external to it.  Where this boundary 

is the meanings assigned to an assemblage, it is the idea of what makes a 



 21 

given assemblage.  Using shark fin soup as an example, the assignment of 

the soup as a delicacy and suitable for human consumption encourages its 

consumption and in turn inspires the label of a delicacy.  The dish is defined 

by the contents of a bowl and how the textures and tastes of shark fin, 

chicken broth, and mushrooms combine, but as a food it is shaped by ideas 

of providing sexual potency and appetite enhancement, or for others as a 

symbol of cruelty, and as discussed in the section on food the act of eating.  

Words and actions create an assemblage to be engaged with and these 

interactions create assemblages to speak of and act upon.   

 The feature of assemblages which make the theory suitable for 

viewing the creation of waste is ‘becoming’ which is also drawn from 

Deleuze and Guattari (1988).  The term becoming indicates a conceptual 

shift of assemblages toward each another.  This shift can represent both the 

internal, emergent changes and external impacts that result in food 

becoming waste.  The existence of the boundaries between assemblages 

enables movement across and within them, with the possibility of crossing 

exceeding and solidifying these bounds (Goodman & Sage, 2014).  Deleuze 

and Guattari (1988) discuss becoming from a human perspective.  Thus a 

human becoming potato may involve a person adopting a stationary 

existence without thought or movement, with a human only growing 

outward, much like a couch potato.  Then for a human becoming potato this 

includes a similar movement in a potato becoming human (Deleuze and 

Guattari, 1988: 290).  The idea of becomings as possible in non-human 

assemblages is the aspect I draw on in food becoming waste.  For this thesis 

rather than a human becoming potato, it is the becoming of a potato into 

something else.  In the case of food this becoming arises by practices of 

people within the catering kitchen and where food is placed.  For instance a 

potato salad moves toward becoming waste as each ingredient alters due to 

internal and external changes arising from how it is treated.  A potato salad 

left in the sun will lose value faster than one placed in a fridge, while one 

made with onion will have chemical reactions that break apart other 

ingredients more quickly.  Placement within a rubbish bin allows a 

conceptual shift toward becoming waste, whereas placement within a 

bucket for pig feed represents a shift from human food into becoming pig 

feed.  It is these pathways of the becoming of nonhuman objects that is 

most useful for the discussion of waste.  For food to become waste it can be 

a literal process as a potato is assigned traits of waste through how it is 



 
 
22 

engaged with.  My understanding of the process of creating waste is based 

upon this idea of becoming, that creating waste is derived from the 

movement of dishes toward becoming waste.  

 Becoming for food and waste involves changes of value from aspects 

within an assemblage and practices and ideas imposed from outside can act 

as catalysts in food becoming food.  The internal configurations of a dish 

shifting toward creating something new, and the means of external 

handling which result in engaging with an object differently can impact the 

speed of food becoming waste.  These shifts include those derived from 

physical changes such as the formation of mould upon cheese or perceived 

changes of a bottle of milk exceeding its best before date.  Each of these 

instances is a case of these items becoming waste.  The rate of becoming for 

food to waste or something else can differ between different actors and 

placements, as for instance one person may consider mouldy cheese 

inedible and suitable only to be thrown away, while another cuts away the 

mould, or placing milk in the fridge delays the rate of curdling.  For these 

instances the changes are emergent from changes that occur internally 

within food.  Unnoticeable shifts at the micro scale also drive food onwards 

through its journey.  However it is this process of change and how the 

change is dealt with which informs the creation of waste.  

 As changes occur within an assemblage, these drive the continuing 

journeys of food.  Even when placed in the fridge or freezer and neglected, 

these changes continue to occur from within food.  Food inherently breaks 

apart and decays in the process of becoming waste.  For each journey 

however, an assemblage never becomes entirely disconnected from what it 

was, nor becomes entirely what it is moving towards.  For a hamburger 

becoming waste, the lettuce may get droopy, the onions soft, and the bun 

stale, as these ingredients move toward waste.  However even as this 

hamburger passes from something deemed suitable for human 

consumption toward waste, the knowledge of its inherent hamburger-ness 

and the value this held is retained as a reminder of what it once was before 

it passes to landfill entirely (Edensor, 2005).  The hamburger and the 

ingredients that make it up do not end, only the ways they are engaged with 

at different points in its journey.  The hamburger does not become waste 

completely while there is some remnant of value, even if this value is one 

which exists only in the mind as guilt or regret (Hetherington, 2004: 170).  



 23 

Similarly the ingredients of the hamburger become waste together but at 

different rates, each according to its original form.  These different 

interactions allow for different relationships between assemblages to 

develop (Gille, 2013: 29).  

 Foods advance constantly toward becoming waste.  Meat decays, 

fruit rots, and baked goods go stale; although how food is engaged with can 

change the rate at which food moves toward waste, such as putting food in 

the fridge or having food canned and vacuum sealed.  The causes of these 

movements emerge from each piece of food in the form of tiny changes such 

as cells losing or gaining water and molecules breaking apart and 

recombining.  As such, food becoming waste is an emergent feature that 

arises from the internal configurations of its components changing from 

within, externally imposed relations for each dish such as ideas of what it 

should be and regulations impacting practices, and interactions between 

different people, other dishes, and objects which share space with food.  For 

this thesis it is interactions that are reflected through changes within dishes 

as assemblages and how the boundaries of food and waste are assigned 

which are to be highlighted. 

2.2.5. Mixing Ingredients: Shaping the analysis 
Creating the dishes for this menu requires each of the ingredients to be 

mixed together to produce a coherent whole.  Thus the concepts of food, 

waste, conduits and journeys, and assemblages I have discussed above shall 

be combined to enable analysis of waste creation in catering.  Food, waste, 

conduits, and assemblages together provide the lens through which the 

ethnographic data gathered is analysed.  

 The creation of every dish involves explicit efforts by people engaged 

with food to combine diverse elements into an assemblage.  Making a 

banana loaf involves taking bananas and walnuts and reconfiguring them 

with other ingredients.  Bananas and walnuts initially exist as separate and 

independent ingredients protected by tough outer layers.  Combining them 

into a loaf means they no longer have this independent existence; instead 

their flavours interact to produce a combination of tastes neither can 

generate alone.  

 Over the course of a dishes’ journey it accumulates small changes.  

These are produced over time and can be influenced by the places, 



 
 
24 

practices, and other objects which share a kitchen space.  A banana loaf 

goes stale over time as starch crystallises, or it could be placed in a toaster 

to become warm and crusty, or if put next to cut onions, it can absorb their 

flavour.  Each of these changes leads to an alteration of a banana loaf as an 

assemblage, but they need not create waste.  When it is desirable for food to 

become something else, be it waste by placement into a rubbish bin, garden 

nutrients by journeying into a compost heap, or food for someone else to 

consume via donation, it can be placed into a conduit where this transition 

can occur.  Each conduit exists as a point where an assemblage can undergo 

a change of value to pass into the next stage of its journey, be it a 

dissipation of existing value into waste or adoption of value for something 

else.  Examples for a banana loaf is being put into the rubbish bin, being 

made into a bread and butter pudding, or going into the compost.  Each 

case represents a banana loaf assemblage becoming something else; waste, 

another dish, or worm food.  These conduits however require food to be 

placed within them by individuals, thus they represent a moment of 

decision and engagement with food that can lead to the creation of waste.  

 My intention is to follow food journeys which involve the creation of 

waste.  To this end I argue each dish is an assemblage and the changes that 

occur over the course of its journeys provide insight how waste is created.  

Thus I will follow food as it journeys through The Amber Flower and 

consider the changes which occur.  Doing so will reveal the factors that 

cause food to become waste or something else. 

2.3. Cooking: Method of data gathering 
Once all the ingredients have been combined into a coherent whole the 

ingredients must be bound together to create the reactions that produce a 

dish.  To derive the data the technique chosen was participant observation, 

underpinned by Cook et al.’s (2004) ‘follow the thing’ method to observe 

journeys of food waste through the catering kitchen.  By following food as it 

journeys through the kitchen of The Amber Flower it is possible to see the 

outcome of changes that occur within food and the external influences 

which result in creating waste in the catering kitchen.  Together the internal 

and external interactions determine how assigned value changes 

throughout journey, from ingredients to food to waste.  This section first 

presents the method of participant observation, then the site and enactment 

of the method. 



 25 

2.3.1. Preheating the oven: Participant observation 
The technique I deemed most suitable to explore waste creation in catering 

was participant observation.  Participant observation grants the 

opportunity to go onto a research site to observe and participate directly in 

what is occurring.  Immersion in the site enables the researcher to perceive 

the entanglements between people, objects, and places which are not easily 

visible by research techniques which have been performed thus far in the 

food waste literature.  The moments of transition and journeys which are 

invisible when looking in from the outside are necessary to understand 

practices (O’Connor, 2013).  Participant observation allows data to emerge, 

revealing relevant details that may not have been obvious at the outset of 

the study (Stuckey, et al., 2014; Rosaldo, 1989: 19).  The researcher 

interprets meaning by sharing in the context of the site while taking into 

account their own perspectives (Clifford, 1983).  By creating rich 

descriptions of food journeys and the context in which they occur, multiple 

elements of the catering kitchen can be considered; using both what is 

reported by staff members and what is seen by the researcher.  Greater 

insight into the elements that make up each dish assemblage and the 

changes which develop over the course of their journeys are made possible 

through participant observation.  

 The strength of participant observation is that it involves the 

researcher stepping into the site to partake in and observe the everyday 

lives of participants.  Not only does it capture the mundane which can be 

overshadowed by extreme or unusual events (Walford, 2009: 273), but it 

also encourages a holistic view of the many interactions that take place 

(Evered & Louis, 2001).  Thus participant observation gives visibility to the 

everyday occurrences and the entanglements between people, places, 

objects, and ideas (Cook et al., 2004: 662).  Revealing these entanglements 

grants visibility to the moments of transition which occur for food 

journeying through The Amber Flower and the influences which create 

changes within a dish.  Participant observation embraces the messiness of 

reality by granting insight into the full context which generates how 

individuals and objects interact (Iacono, Brown, & Holtham, 2009: 44).  

There will always be biases and errors of memory and recording that enter 

into the data, but for an exploratory study of practices where waste is 



 
 
26 

created a glimpse can be provided into the practices of The Amber Flower’s 

staff in creating food and waste.  

 The Amber Flower interacts with food and waste everyday it is in the 

business of hospitality.  The result is that engagements with food are 

mundane and ordinary, making them difficult to express to those beyond 

the kitchen’s walls.  Looking at statistical data has revealed that everyday 

practices are important, but they cannot easily be discovered using 

statistical methods (Lebersorger & Schneider, 2014).  To gain information 

about practices requires in-depth study to explore what occurs on the 

ground.  Interviews have been successful at extracting information on 

practices, but Stuckey, et al. (2014) find discrepancies are more likely to 

arise between interview information and participant observation data when 

the potential for guilt exists.  As catering is presented as a wasteful industry, 

and individuals within The Amber Flower believe themselves to produce a 

lot of waste, there is the potential for such discrepancies to arise.  

Participant observation of actual behaviours regarding the creation of food 

waste reduces these discrepancies and allows for knowledge to be gleaned 

with a less idealised image of a participant’s own activities.  

 Examples of studies that have successfully used participant 

observation to glean insights into food geographies include Evans (2011a; 

2011b; 2012a; 2012b) looking at households food waste practices; Fine 

(1996) providing insight into practices of commercial kitchens in America; 

Baker (2013) engaged with pig farmers to reveal the level of care and 

attention required to raise pigs for slaughter; and Tibbals’ (2008) 

observation of waitresses using normalised gender roles to assert 

individuality.  Participant observation has also been undertaken with regard 

to food provision for hospitals (see Ofei, Holst, Rasmussen, & Mikkelsen, 

2014; Goonan, Mirosa, & Spence, 2014).  

 To gather data during participant observation the focus was to 

‘follow the thing’ as proposed by Cook et al. (2004).  The process of 

following a thing so the fragmentary, multiple, and contradictory systems of 

which it is part can be narrated, which provides space for readers to develop 

their own knowledge of these systems (Cook & Crang, 1996: 41 cited in 

Cook et al., 2004: 642).  Data I present in this thesis seeks to provide a set 

of narratives by following food as it is made in a dish, consumed, and 



 27 

becomes waste as in a catering kitchen at The Amber Flower.  The 

narratives I chose to follow are centred on three significant types of food 

provided in catering, vegetables, meat, and baked goods as each serve 

different roles in a dining experience and they represent different food and 

waste practices.  The journeys presented within these food types were those 

that indicated cases of food becoming waste, or efforts where food was 

diverted from becoming waste.  Food’s entanglement with people, other 

objects, ideas, and the place where it is engaged with all have a role in 

creating waste.  Following food presents a way of focusing upon the 

journeys necessary to observe the changes that result in the creation of 

waste. 

2.3.2. Heating food: The research site 
The research site selected for this thesis was a single catering firm that will 

be described in greater detail in Chapter Three.  A single research site was 

deemed most suitable to prevent the need to learn the organisational 

structures of multiple firms, while remaining within the time constraints of 

a Masters thesis.  The ability to generalise is thus restricted, but as the 

research seeks to explore practices in waste creation generalisation is not 

the main goal.  The research was subject to ethical review in the School of 

People, Environment, and Planning and a low risk ethics application was 

submitted to the Massey University Human Ethics Office.  

 The observation period took place between December 4th 2013 and 

March 28th 2014.  A long observation period has the benefit of allowing the 

researcher to become embedded and accepted within an organisation, 

ideally putting participants at ease and reducing feelings of scrutiny 

(Brockmann, 2011: 235).  I openly entered The Amber Flower as a 

researcher and during this period I worked as a part time kitchenhand 

attending two or three shifts each week.  My tasks involved cleaning plates, 

crockery, and kitchen equipment, preparing food, cleaning the kitchen, and 

some food delivery.  As a kitchenhand I was well positioned to observe and 

engage in activities occurring at all moments of food flows, from the 

preparation of ingredients to the return of leftovers.  The shifts I worked 

were determined by the Executive Chef. 

 During the data collection period my intention was to be open and 

obvious regarding my role as a researcher.  Before my first day the 



 
 
28 

Executive Chef let the kitchen staff know of the research and my presence 

and all ethical concerns went through him.  Over the course of each day I 

would take detailed notes openly in a small green notebook whenever 

possible.  The intention was to follow Fine (1996: 236) in creating a state 

where my presence as a researcher was no longer a novelty or noteworthy, 

encouraging participants to be at ease while I remained open about my 

purpose.  The notes were later translated into full descriptive narratives 

from which field notes were derived and transferred onto a spreadsheet for 

coding.  

 The first month and a half of the observation period I worked the 

day shift in the main kitchen, starting approximately 6am and continuing 

until 2:30pm.  Doing this gave me the opportunity to get used to the 

rhythms and routines of The Amber Flower and learn about day to day food 

and waste practices, such as which conduits are used and what food 

journeys take place.  The day shift is when most ingredients are prepared 

and dishes are made; cooking tends to be left for the moments before a dish 

is needed, similar to what occurs in a restaurant (Fine, 1996).  During 

February I worked in a satellite kitchen to discover the differences between 

places of operation, before I returned to the main kitchen to contribute to 

supplying a frenetic university open day.  The final month I spent working 

weddings during the evening shift on Fridays and Saturdays.  For these 

days I began around 3pm and continued until everything was completed 

which ranged between 9pm and 11pm.  The final month provided the 

opportunity to observe practices regarding onsite formal catering.  Photos 

were taken with permission of the Executive Chef during a separate trip 

after the observation period.  To ensure staff and the firm remain 

anonymous no identifying features such as logos or staff members were 

included in the photos presented here.  

 Thematic analysis was used in this research to make the gathered 

data manageable.  Coding through thematic analysis allows data to be 

collated and categorised to create abstract ideas, which can be revealed by 

analysing and visualising gathered data (Herbert, 2010: 73).  Starting with 

the central question of waste creation in catering, this was divided into 

three themes, what counts as food waste, where food waste goes, and the 

reasons for this movement.  Supporting these major themes were four 

minor themes, available conduits, moments of food becoming waste, 



 29 

relationships between actors and objects, and thoughts regarding waste 

creation by the participants.  These minor themes sought to capture 

moments of transition as they are present and the entanglements amongst 

people, objects, places, and ideas.  Jointly these present the creation of a 

dish as assemblage and their journeys throughout the catering kitchen.  The 

seven minor themes were then separated into four or five subthemes each.  

From the combination of these themes food journeys through catering were 

derived, the conduits food journeys through, and the impact conduits have 

on waste creation.  

 The selection of participant observation as a data gathering 

technique enables a direct view of food journeys through catering, granting 

visibility to how food changes throughout its journey into becoming waste.  

Placing a researcher into a research site captures the messiness of the many 

entanglements between people, objects, places, and times.  Through 

capturing this data, information about moments of transition from one 

assemblage to another through conduits can be revealed.  For this thesis 

participant observation allows both food journeys that create waste and 

alternative journeys where food becomes something else to be portrayed. 

2.4. Concluding Comments 
The importance of food waste is centred upon a desire for a sustainable 

supply of food and more efficient use of resources in its production and 

consumption.  However, the point where this more efficient use can take 

place is governed by individuals both within and outside catering.  People 

are those who engage with food and make the decisions regarding what it 

can become.  Understanding the practices of those who engage with food 

and waste is thus essential for understanding how waste is created.  

 For this purpose I have defined the terms of food and waste that I 

will use throughout the thesis and the means of understanding food 

assemblages becoming waste through journeys and conduits.  Value, as 

something embedded within an ingredient, or enhanced within a dish 

through preparation, provides the form, purpose, and structure to items of 

food.  The loss of value is a part of the process of an assemblage becoming 

waste, or else this value may be converted into something else.  For food 

provided by catering, value is found in its desirability for human 

consumption.  The loss, creation, and changes of this value over time are 



 
 
30 

influenced by the practices that take place within the catering kitchen.  

Participant observation offers a means to see these practices of staff at The 

Amber Flower in creating food waste or avoiding its creation, by looking 

directly at the small changes within food and the interlocking elements that 

go into food becoming waste or something else. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 31 

3. Entrée: Situating food journeys 
As part of a multi-course meal it is traditional to serve an entrée to frame 

and hint at the themes of the main course to follow.  For this menu the 

entrée will situate the research site.  Understanding food journeys requires 

this contextual knowledge as different places influence how food moves 

within a firm.  With different journeys present in different contexts, there 

are different practices and different means of creating dishes and waste.  

Times and places are essential to understanding how and why an activity 

occurs (Warf & Arias, 2009), as material and social infrastructure defines 

and limits possible actions (Chappells, Medd, & Shove, 2011).  Over this 

entrée I will elaborate on the chosen function centre by describing its 

general characteristics and staff.  To close the entrée will be a taste of the 

main course by providing the main creators of waste in food journeys for 

The Amber Flower. 

3.1. The Place of Dining: Describing the firm 
Situating food journeys within the physical place of a catering firm aids in 

understanding the ethnographic data and the connections between 

components discussed in the items of the main course.  As food flows are 

the lifeblood of The Amber Flower, the physical space is its heart which 

enables these flows to take place.  From the building that houses The Amber 

Flower, dishes can flow to consumers and cycle back again as leftovers.  

Here is where all decisions regarding conduits and food journeys take place 

and the space through which all food enters as ingredients and leaves as 

dishes, waste, or something else.  The configuration of this space shapes 

how and where food goes, as well as the creation of waste.  With the 

research of waste practices contained within the bounds of food moving 

through the catering kitchen of The Amber Flower.    

 The Amber Flower is located on a university campus.  As the 

university grew the building that now houses The Amber Flower began 

serving food with a lunch service that continues to this day.  Since then it 

has grown and developed into a function centre, serving food for both 

onsite functions and catering offsite.  The Amber Flower’s connections to 

the university have remained as it supplies the food to many functions upon 

the campus and staff are officially paid by the university.  Since its 

conversion to a fully fledged function centre, The Amber Flower has 



 
 
32 

expanded to supply food for functions throughout the nearby city.  Before 

The Amber Flower are picturesque gardens and wide open lawns upon a 

hill.  For large onsite functions the lawns provide space to set up a marquee 

and provide a secluded place for weddings and corporate functions of up to 

450.  Inside, The Amber Flower offers four additional rooms for hire.  Each 

of these rooms provides a different amount of space and intimacy to 

accommodate a diverse range of functions with the largest room seating 

ninety people and the smallest up to twelve.    

 A significant feature of catering is creating dishes to serve at a site of 

the host’s choosing.  Deliveries are made by a single van painted with The 

Amber Flower’s colours and logo, which, when not in use, is parked outside 

the kitchen.  Inside, it is spacious and open with shelving to accommodate 

wrapped and bound dishes (Figure 1).  The van delivers food all around the 

university and is also used in transporting ingredients between The Amber 

Flower’s main and satellite kitchens.  When a function has completed, the 

delivery van will return and collect the leftover food and any serving plates.  

These leftovers and serving ware will then be returned to the kitchen.  

Generally these remains will be placed in blue crates that will be cleaned in 

the kitchen together with the serving ware.  For large functions, or when 

many functions end at the same time, these crates can prove insufficient 

and instead large clear containers that are approximately a metre long are 

used instead.  

 Included in The Amber Flower’s building is an onsite café.  Here 

they provide tea and coffee service from 9am onwards and, from 11:30am 

until 2pm, a lunch buffet.  The food available is generally made daily and is 

placed on a long counter (Figure 2).  The first section is heated and can 

include a diverse range of dishes with various styles, tastes, and forms, 

often with meat, rice, and pasta.  Next is a chilled section containing cool 

salads and sushi, followed by a set of stacked wicker baskets holding 

cutlery.  Last is a long, glass cabinet with the daily selection of pies, 

savouries, muffins, slices, cakes, scones, and sandwiches carefully arranged 

upon the racks.  These sandwiches and baked goods are made fresh daily 

with each day bringing different flavours depending on what ingredients are 

available.  At the end is the counter where orders are taken and coffee and 

tea prepared.  



 33 

 

 

Figure 1: A view inside The Amber Flower's van. 

 
The inside of The Amber Flower’s van is kept clean and tidy, despite the number of dishes 

that travel within it over the course of any given day.  At the back is the shelving and trays 

upon which dishes are kept for transport to a function.  Source: Daniel Ryland, 2015. 

 

 

 

 



 
 
34 

Figure 2: Onsite lunch buffet. 

 
The long counter contains dishes for lunch as well as the necessary cutlery and plates.  The 

closest part is where hot food is placed during the lunch buffet.  Temperature control is 

required to ensure hot food does not cool and cold food does not warm up during the lunch 

hour.  Source: Daniel Ryland, 2015. 

 

 In The Amber Flower many food journeys and practices involved in 

creating waste occurred within the kitchen.  To give an idea of the 

formation of this space and to aid in visualising food journeys, a floor plan 

of the kitchen is provided in Figure 3.  During the early morning the kitchen 

presents an open sanitary space.  Sitting in the centre are three greyish 

workbenches arranged in an ‘I’ shape with one of the rubbish bins nearby.  

Towards the left is a workstation for making sandwiches, the chiller, and 

storage for dry ingredients.  To the right, ovens, stoves, and heating 

cabinets predominate.  More detailed descriptions of the workstations of 

each of the kitchen staff will be presented in the next section.  As a shift 

progresses, the kitchen gets increasingly messy as bits of food are dropped, 

water from cleaning spreads around washstations, and leftovers come back 

from functions.  However at the end of each shift the kitchen is returned to 

its pristine state by mopping the floors, wiping down workstations, and 

ensuring all equipment has been cleaned and put away.  On the wall above a 



 35 

 

 

Figure 3: Floor plan of The Amber Flower’s kitchen.  

 
An approximate floor plan of The Amber Flower’s kitchen which gives an idea of the space of 

food flows.  This will provide context for the ethnographical information of food journeys 

presented in the main course.  Thus the journeys and resting places of food and moments 

where they become waste can be visualised.  Source: Daniel Ryland 2014, made using eTeks’ 

(2006) Sweet Home 3D. 

 



 
 
36 

bench next to the chiller is one of the important notices, the kitchen report.  

The report lists all the functions that will be held that day, the number of 

guests attending each, what food needs to be provided, where and when the 

function is, and any other notes such as dietary requirements, delivery 

requests, or noteworthy features chefs need to consider.  During the 

observation period this report ranged from listing three functions with less 

than ten guests each (15th January) to reports five pages long with 

approximately fifteen functions and guest numbers in the hundreds (11th 

December).  

 Access to the kitchen and staff areas is via a small path hidden by 

part of the garden.  Following this path behind the building leads to an 

enclosed space with a herb garden and small shed.  Once inside there is a 

small corridor leading to offices, changing rooms, toilets, and storage room; 

through a white door away from the offices can be found the kitchen.  Most 

days the radio is softly playing in the background, but otherwise the kitchen 

is largely quiet, even when filled with kitchen staff working.  The imagined 

hustle and bustle of the stereotypical television kitchen was a place of an 

intense silence as each staff member concentrated on work.  Even busy 

periods saw a hush over the kitchen, more likely to be broken by a 

momentary joke to ease the tension than the loud clatter of pots and pans.  

Throughout the day the predominant constant background noise would 

change.  Early in the morning there is the whirring of a large mixing 

machine with the occasional ping of a timer going off; after a large function 

or the lunch buffet the sound would be the sustained steaming and swishing 

of the steriliser as a constant stream of cutlery and plates pass through.  

 Kitchen scents would also shift over time.  During the early morning 

the scent of freshly baked muffins and scones floated throughout the 

kitchen.  As the shift continued the smells would be replaced by what was 

being made for functions and the lunch buffet that day, which could be as 

diverse as the tang of juices from fruit sliced for a fruit platter to a very 

smelly spray for imparting a smoky flavour to fish.  Evenings in the kitchen 

lacked the morning baking and instead tended to only smell of the food 

made for functions.  However, at the washstation, where I often worked all  

smells would soon be replaced with a faint whiff of the cleaning chemical 

D10 used in both the steriliser and a pair of buckets into which the front 

staff put cutlery and mugs to soak.  



 37 

 In the kitchen, waste is dealt with at the two washstations.  The first 

is placed at the opening between the kitchen to the Front, where used 

cutlery and plates are placed for cleaning and leftovers from functions 

come.  Nearby is a rubbish bin for staff to place leftovers from plates and 

upon a wheeled bench sit two buckets filled with a scoop of D10 and lots of 

hot water for pre-soaking mugs and cutlery.  The sink is a standard size and 

reminiscent of a household sink (Figure 4).  Next to the sink is a dispenser 

for D1 dishwashing liquid and a tap to access boiling water.  Plates, kitchen 

utensils, bowls, and everything else are first rinsed and cleaned at this sink 

to remove any remaining scraps and tough, baked on food.  Then all these 

rinsed objects go into the steriliser.  The steriliser looks like a large steel box 

with a handle around it (Figure 5).  When closed it automatically begins a 

washing cycle producing a loud whirring and swishing sound as hot water 

and chemicals are sprayed upon the items within.  Throughout this process 

a lot of heat is given off producing a humid and warm atmosphere around 

the washstation.  When the steriliser completes the cleaning, the sounds 

will quieten and eventually stop as the water is drained away and the 

objects within are dried.  Opening the steriliser once this process is 

complete reveals a large, square green or blue plastic pallet filled with 

steaming warm plates, cutlery, kitchen utensils, and mugs to be put away.  

Most of the objects come out sparkling clean and relatively dry, but very 

hot.  Handling plates or metal trays would often require the use of a nearby 

tea towel to avoid burning one’s hands.  The entire process takes only a few 

minutes, just enough time to have the next pallet filled and the cleaned 

plates, utensils, and other items put away.   

 At the other end of the kitchen is the second washstation which is 

placed behind the central workbenches and was called ‘grand central 

station’ by one of the staff (Figure 6).  Into this sink are placed the largest 

objects that need to be cleaned such as cooking trays and chopping boards, 

and where kitchen utensils such as muffins trays and baking trays are 

placed to be soaked.  Similar to the main washstation there is a D1 

dispenser, but there is neither a steriliser nor a rubbish bin nearby.  Instead 

 

 

 



 
 
38 

 

 

Figure 4: Sink at the washstation. 

 
Here is the washstation, where all the plates and cutlery are dealt with before going into the 

steriliser.  The container labelled ‘Hydro’ on the left contains the dishwashing liquid D1.  In 

the plastic green tray on the right sits plates which have been cleaned and are ready to go 

through the steriliser.  Source: Daniel Ryland, 2015.    

 

 

 

 

 



 39 

 

 

Figure 5: The Amber Flower’s steriliser.  

 
Next to the washstation is the all important steriliser.  All plates, trays, and most kitchen 

equipment pass between these metal walls.  In the image above a metal serving tray has 

recently been sterilised and a stack of plates and serving platters from a function are about to 

pass through.  Source: Daniel Ryland, 2015. 

 

 



 
 
40 

Figure 6: A second washstation, ‘Grand Central Station.’  

 
At the second washstation items that are too big for the smaller one may be washed and left 

to soak without slowing down the pace of cleaning.  Here also is where kitchen staff has 

access to water when needed for cooking.  A waste disposal unit in the drain ensures that 

food scraps can easily go down the drain.  Source: Daniel Ryland, 2015. 

 

the sink includes a waste disposal unit which drains the sink and grinds up 

food as it passes down the drain.  A benefit of having a second washstation 

is its ability to be used by another member of the kitchen staff to rinse and 

clean objects before taking them to the steriliser, thus more can be cleaned 

and made available for once again preparing and eating food.  All objects 

cleaned this way must still be placed in the steriliser, thus after cleaning 

they are taken across the kitchen to be sterilised.  Ingredients or leftovers 

placed to the right of this washstation is an indicator that they are no longer 

valuable and can be tipped down the drain. 

Located approximately two kilometres distant is a smaller satellite 

kitchen of The Amber Flower.  Here The Amber Flower provides breakfast, 

morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner at an institution and 

convention centre.  On the instances I observed, there were between thirty 

and forty guests to serve.  The satellite kitchen itself is a small room added 

to the side of a larger building and can only comfortably fit a few people 

working at the same time.  Compared to the main kitchen, the tighter space 



 41 

and fewer things to clean ensured the scent of cooking food was more 

prominent.  Most mornings I spent at the satellite kitchen were spent 

quietly as the radio was not turned on until the front staff arrived closer to 

9am.  Beside the satellite kitchen is an open, sunlit room that serves as a 

dining area.  

The spaces described frame the bounds of food journeys f