Food waste has become an issue of great public concern because of its environmental impacts and strategic significance of food security worldwide. In the context of ecological civilization construction and circular economy development in China food waste recycling faces critical theoretical and practice obstacles in reality. As China's urban population grows and the restaurant industry expands, the food waste generated by restaurants increases. Therefore restaurant owners’ attitude and behavior towards food waste recycling plays a pivotal role. As a stakeholder, the awareness of restaurant owners affects their attitudes and behavior towards the environment. In this paper, 1,050 restaurant owners from six cities of Gansu province in northwestern China were surveyed to study their awareness of food waste recycling. Using the awareness assessment model, the awareness level of 1,050 restaurant owners were calculated. The results show that 37.33% of respondents has a high awareness and 62.67% of them has a low awareness of food waste recycling. This indicates that the restaurant owners have a low level of overall awareness. Logistic regression model was used to examine factors that affect the awareness level of restaurant owners. Compared with the male restaurant owner, the female one has a lower awareness. The younger restaurant owner has a higher awareness than the older one. In addition, factors, including the educational level of restaurant owner, restaurant scale, amount of daily restaurant food waste, the way of food waste treatment, and the macroeconomic development of city where restaurants located, have positive effects on the awareness.