Understanding Out-of-Home Plate Waste:A systematic review and future research agenda

Consumer food waste represents a critical global challenge with substantial social, economic, and environmental costs. One underexplored but significant domain is plate waste, which poses specific challenges for the hospitality and food service sector and undermines global sustainability goals. Given the theoretical fragmentation and methodological dispersion in this area, a comprehensive synthesis is urgently needed. This study presents a systematic literature review of 101 peer-reviewed publications to consolidate current knowledge of how plate waste has been understood and addressed and identify future research and practical directions. We find that, despite increasing interest, existing research tends to conceptualise plate waste as a static outcome of consumer choice, often relying on individualised, cognitive-behavioural models while underexploring social, contextual, and systemic influences and dynamic dining procedures. This SLR synthesises evidence to theorise plate waste as a processual and dynamic phenomenon, unfolding through a sequence of “decisive moments” in the dining-out experience—planning, ordering, food evaluation, and leftover handling. These moments are shaped by interacting micro level intrapersonal, meso level-social, physical, and macro-level factors, and entangled with broader household and cultural food practices. We develop an integrative framework that shifts the analytical focus from static, individualised, outcome-based to process-based, multi-leveled understandings of consumption and waste in hospitality. We conclude with a research agenda and implications for hospitality stakeholders. This review establishes a critical foundation for advancing context-sensitive, sustainable food consumption strategies in hospitality research.