How do I count catered staff meals and canteen food in our carbon footprint?

Food your caterer serves to staff is Scope 3 Category 1, purchased goods and services. Count meals served by menu type and multiply by a per meal factor, or, if you only have the caterer's invoices, multiply spend by a food services factor and label it spend-based. Meat and dairy dishes drive most of the result.

What sits where

• Food and the caterer's service: Scope 3 Category 1.
• Kitchen LPG or PNG: Scope 1 if your company buys the fuel and runs the kitchen; Category 1 inside the caterer's charge if the caterer buys it.
• Kitchen electricity on your meter: Scope 2.
• Food waste you send for disposal: Category 5, waste generated in operations.
• Meals bought by staff with their own money in a food court: outside your inventory.

Activity method: meals by menu type

Ask the caterer for monthly counts of meals served, split at least into vegetarian and non-vegetarian, and ideally by dish type. Multiply each count by a per meal factor from a published food footprint dataset and name it. Dairy heavy meals such as paneer and ghee dishes sit between plain vegetarian and meat meals, so a two-way split is the minimum, not the ideal.

Spend method: caterer invoices

If meal counts are not available, multiply the caterer's invoice value, net of GST, by a food services spend factor in kg CO2e per rupee. Convert any factor published in another currency and year to rupees for the same year. Label the result spend-based: it cannot show a menu change, and it moves with prices rather than food.

Is it worth counting at all

Check it against your other categories with a quick spend estimate first. If it is material, move to meal counts so a menu change, such as more vegetarian days, shows in the number. In the example below, moving from 70% to 80% vegetarian meals cuts about 19 tonnes, which a spend figure would not show.

Illustrative example: one office canteen for a year

• Meals served: 500 a day x 250 working days = 125,000 meals; 70% vegetarian, 30% non-vegetarian
• Vegetarian: 87,500 x 1.0 kg CO2e per meal (assumed) = 87,500 kg CO2e
• Non-vegetarian: 37,500 x 2.5 kg CO2e per meal (assumed) = 93,750 kg CO2e
• Total: 87,500 + 93,750 = 181,250 kg CO2e, about 181 tonnes in Category 1
• Shifting to 80% vegetarian: 100,000 x 1.0 + 25,000 x 2.5 = 162,500 kg CO2e, about 19 tonnes lower

Per meal factors here are placeholders to show the method; use a named dataset and keep it fixed year to year.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads caterer and food purchase invoices, uses printed quantities where they exist, and gives a spend-based estimate, labelled spend-based with wider uncertainty, where only spend is available. It also reads kitchen LPG invoices at 2.98 kg CO2 per kg (IPCC 2006 default) into Scope 1.

• Induction vs LPG in a canteen kitchen
• Spend-based vs activity-based Scope 3
• Food waste: landfill, compost or biogas

Sources: GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard, GHG Protocol Technical Guidance for Calculating Scope 3 Emissions, Category 1

Last reviewed 2026-10-19.