Food waste (FW) generally has high starch content and is rich in nutritional compounds, including lipids, proteins and acids. It is therefore potentially a renewable resource and its utilization for value-added product development is gaining interest. In this study, FW from a cafeteria was used as sole substrate for glucose production, and the fermentation conditions for optimum glucose yield were firstly optimized using response surface methodology. It was found that glucose yield was significantly affected by α-amylase loading, solid loading and temperature. The optimal conditions were found to be an α-amylase loading of 12.15 U/g FW, a solid loading of 22.4% and a culture temperature of 83.8°C for 90 min, which resulted in a maximum glucose yield of 217 mg/g. Secondly, in order to increase the final glucose concentration, an in situ produced fungal mash rich in glucoamylase was obtained from Aspergillus awamori which resulted in a glucose concentration of 99.1 g/L. When a fungal mash rich in cellulase obtained from Trichoderma reesei was combined with glucoamylase, a maximum of 140 g/L of glucose was obtained. This study showed that FW is a suitable substrate for saccharification with high conversion yield, indicating the potential utilization of food wastes for value-added chemicals production.