Context: Food waste is often framed as a sustainability issue, but in operations it is an execution discipline that fails when ordering, preparation, and replenishment decisions arrive too late.

Challenges: Demand shifts while plans remain fixed, preparation quantities are finalized without visibility into sell-through, and expiry risk surfaces only after inventory has already aged, with ownership fragmented across procurement, kitchen, and store teams.

Solution: The Food Waste Reduction Guidance Agent, an AI agent built using Microsoft Copilot Studio, monitors sell-through and expiry signals as they approach threshold and intervenes during preparation and ordering decisions, flagging overproduction before inventory can no longer be redirected or repurposed.

Impact: Operators adopting this approach see teams act before waste is locked in and inventory flows align with real demand, with food waste declining consistently as margins improve.