How M’tucci’s food waste is boosting New Mexico soil

Just one week of the food waste amassed by all M’tucci’s restaurants could produce enough compost to fill a large tract of Albuquerque farmland, according to M’tucci’s Restaurants brand manager Howie Kaibel.

Now, instead of letting that food waste end up in a landfill, M’tucci’s is giving its food waste to Soilutions — New Mexico’s largest composting company — so that it can become nutrient-rich compost.

“As I learned more about the environmental impact of composting compared to dumping food waste, it was simply a question of how do we make that happen,” said Shawn Cronin, M’tucci’s Restaurants company chef and partner, in a statement. “Through our partnership with Soilutions, we will be able to achieve that. We are hopeful that others in our local restaurant industry will join us (in) rethinking how we handle our waste.”

M’tucci’s Restaurants finalized its partnership with Soilutions last week, becoming the second restaurant to officially join Soilutions’ food recycling program. The first restaurant to join was Farm & Table in Albuquerque.

Soilutions launched the program in collaboration with Denali, the nation’s largest organics recycling company, last year. The companies said the program, the first of its kind in New Mexico, would significantly increase food waste recycling in the state, transforming roughly 250 tons, or 500,000 pounds, of spoiled and wasted food into nutrient-rich compost that would revitalize New Mexico soil weekly.

The biggest contributors to the program are grocery stores, according to Soilutions President Dawn Dewey. Denali picks up spoiled food from stores across New Mexico and brings it to Soilutions each week. The stores pay Denali to collect the waste, and Denali pays entities like Soilutions to process it with a Denali-provided machine that separates the food from its packaging.

With Soilutions’ 14-acre Albuquerque manufacturing site prepped for processing large volumes of food waste and the necessary certifications secured late last year, the company is ready to add more local restaurants to the program.

“We’re really excited for this partnership and grateful to M’tucci’s for being willing to commit to getting food out of the landfill,” Dewey said.

Aided by Denali, Soilutions has designed a customized food waste management program for M’tucci’s, which is launching the program first at its Nob Hill location, M’tucci’s Bar Roma. M’tucci’s has four full-service restaurants and a speakeasy, but M’tucci’s Bar Roma generates the most food waste.

“Assuming (the program) succeeds in the most challenging of the four (restaurants), then we will expand it through all the others,” Kaibel said.

The restaurant group explored participation in a smaller iteration of Soilutions’ food recycling program several years ago, before Denali entered the picture, but the cost of participation was too high at the time, Kaibel said.

With Denali, the program’s pricing is now “more reasonable,” Kaibel said. He couldn’t pinpoint what the group is paying, but a news release said the cost is comparable to — and potentially even less than — what traditional waste disposal costs.

Soon, Denali will collect the restaurant’s food waste weekly, or as often as needed, from three 60-gallon dumpsters Denali provided the restaurant.

Restaurant officials said the collaboration demonstrates how local restaurants can play a role in addressing climate change, landfill capacity and soil health.

“One of the strongest statements I heard from Denali … is that New Mexico has the poorest soil in the country for agriculture,” Kaibel said. “So we really need initiatives like this.”

Compost returns organic material and nutrients to soil, which improves the soil’s water retention and drought resilience, a news release said.

“If we could see this happening (with restaurants) throughout the state, you can only imagine what we could be doing from an agricultural standpoint,” Kaibel said.

Statewide participation is the goal, Dewey said, adding that the onboarding of M’tucci’s is a good start. M’tucci’s is also considering using Soilutions’ compost and mulch in its restaurants’ plants and landscaping, which Dewey said provides both the restaurant and customers a chance to see “sustainability in action.”

“They’re already such a leader in the local restaurant space, so we’re really excited to continue growing,” Dewey said.

“I am personally really passionate about sustainability, and it’s something I really appreciated about M’tucci’s from the beginning,” said Kaibel, who’s been with the restaurant group for more than three years. “This just takes us to the next level, and we would love to see this model be taken by restaurant companies all over the state.”

Kylie Garcia covers retail and real estate for the Journal. You can reach her at kgarcia@abqjournal.com.