Problem
Hostel messes cook for headcount, not appetite — Sunday biryani runs out by 1pm while weekday khichdi feeds the bin, and the kitchen finds out only after the food is made.
Solution
A night-before pre-order poll wired to the kitchen's prep sheet, plus a weighing-scale log at the counter that turns plate waste into a weekly per-dish report the mess committee can act on.
Cook for appetite, not headcount
Three weeks of weighing plates at one mess: 41kg of cooked food binned per week, almost all from two predictable dishes. A night-before poll moved prep counts by up to 30% and the queue at Sunday lunch actually got shorter.
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