REDUCING FOOD WASTE

Posted on 04/22/2016

A French based hotel chain presently serves 150 million meals a year and they know there is significant waste in that number. Last week AccorHotels announced intent to reduce food waste by 30 percent and a large part of making that happen will be the planting of vegetable gardens at some of their hotel sites.

AccorHotels include the Pullman, Sofitel, Novotel, Mercure and Ibis chains and together they include 3,900 hotels. 

The hotel chain earns 25-30 percent of its revenue in the food category, but they want to know how much money they can save if less food is wasted so they will be requiring their restaurants to weigh and record food that is thrown away. When they learn what that number is, they want to take it down by 30 percent. 

They will be sourcing food locally and planting 1,000 gardens at some of their locations, reducing costs (and emissions) to transport produce. 

The company is looking at menus that now offer up to 40 main courses. “In the future we’re going to have menus with 10, 15 or 20 main courses, with more local products” said Amir Nahai, who leads Accor’s food operations. 

Their website says that 93 percent of their hotels ban endangered seafood species from restaurant menus. 

The hotel chain has cut water consumption by nearly 9 percent energy consumption by 5.3 percent and carbon emissions by 6.2 percent in the past five years. The website states that 9 percent of the hotels use renewable energy. 

AccorHotels next goal is to make their buildings carbon neutral.