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By any traditional measure, the commercial kitchen has long been one of the hospitality industry’s most stubborn battlegrounds for waste. Trimmings, plate waste, surplus production and untouched buffet spreads have, for decades, quietly bled profit and carbon into landfill. Now, that old norm is being dismantled not by grand speeches, but by data, discipline and a growing corps of chefs who have decided that waste is no longer part of the job description.

Hospitality operators using AI-powered waste tracking from UK-founded technology firm Winnow are now collectively saving more than $100 million a year in food costs, a milestone achieved across thousands of kitchens worldwide. Among the operators leading that charge are some of the industry’s most recognisable names: Hilton, Accor, Marriott, Mandarin Oriental and IKEA.

The achievement is not merely a financial marker. Globally, food waste represents an estimated US$1 trillion in economic losses every year, with US$147 billion attributed to surplus food in the US foodservice sector alone, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and ReFED. Winnow’s stated mission is to help the hospitality sector recover US$1 billion of that loss, one kitchen at a time.

Founded in the UK in 2013, Winnow equips professional kitchens with connected hardware and artificial intelligence to track precisely what food is thrown away, when it is discarded, and why. The data stream gives chefs and managers something the industry historically lacked: forensic visibility over waste patterns that were once invisible at the speed of service.

Its newest innovation, Throw & Go, takes that idea a step further. The system captures food waste completely touch-free, allowing teams in high-volume environments to measure waste in real time without breaking workflow. In an industry where seconds matter, ease of use has proved decisive.

Yet, for all the talk of algorithms and sensors, the real leverage point remains conspicuously human.

“This milestone is a tribute to the chefs who are making food waste reduction part of their daily craft,” said Marc Zornes, CEO and co-founder of Winnow. “They are the ones designing menus, rethinking processes, and leading their teams to cook more consciously. Our role is to give them the data to make that easier.”

Since 2024, Winnow has also partnered with zero-waste specialist Chef Vojtech Vegh, whose work focuses on inspiring chefs to view surplus not as a liability, but as a creative resource. It is part of a broader cultural shift underway in professional kitchens, from treating waste as an unavoidable cost of doing business to treating it as a solvable design flaw.

Across the global hotel landscape, that shift is now producing measurable results.

Hilton, through its Green Ramadan 2025 initiative, reduced plate waste by 26 per cent across 45 hotels in 14 countries, supported by Winnow’s AI and educational resources developed in partnership with UNEP West Asia. The program alone is preventing 4.7 million meals from being wasted each year.

Accor now has more than 200 hotels worldwide operating with Winnow technology, collectively saving one meal every six seconds.

In the United States, leading hospitality foodservice provider Guckenheimer announced in 2025 that it had achieved a 64 per cent reduction in food waste across its sites since 2022, saving the equivalent of nearly one million meals annually.

Luxury operator Mandarin Oriental recorded a 36 per cent reduction in food waste across four pilot hotels within the first six months of installing Winnow. The group has since committed to rolling the system out across its 40-plus hotels worldwide.

For major operators, the business case is now as compelling as the moral one.

“Reducing food waste is both a moral imperative and a strategic opportunity for our industry,” said Emma Banks, Vice President of Food & Drink Strategy and Development for EMEA at Hilton. “Through our partnership with Winnow, we’re empowering our chefs with the insights they need to reduce waste and lead change in kitchens around the world. These chefs are preventing 4.7M meals from being wasted each year.”

At Accor, the push is embedded in the corporate sustainability strategy.

“At Accor, reducing food waste is a key lever in our journey towards more sustainable hospitality,” said Coline Pont, Chief Sustainability Officer at Accor. “Through our collaboration with Winnow, we empower our chefs with data-driven insights to make conscious decisions every day. Already, more than 200 of our hotels are equipped with Winnow technology, helping us prevent thousands of meals from being wasted and reinforcing our commitment to responsible operations across the globe.”

In aggregate, kitchens using Winnow are now preventing 28,000 tonnes of food from being wasted every year — equivalent to two meals saved every second. Just as significantly, this translates into more than 122,000 tonnes of CO₂-equivalent emissions avoided annually, the environmental equivalent of 28,000 cars taken off the road for a year, based on calculations aligned with epa.gov methodologies.

The regulatory winds are also shifting fast. Food waste, once treated as a regrettable but inevitable by-product of hospitality, is now firmly in the crosshairs of lawmakers.

The European Union has proposed binding food waste reduction targets for 2030, aligned with the global goal of halving per-capita food waste. In Spain, new legislation passed in April 2025 now requires hospitality businesses to implement formal food waste prevention plans, with enforcement beginning in 2026. In this evolving landscape, measurement is rapidly becoming not only best practice, but baseline compliance.

Cost pressures are sharpening the focus further. With food prices rising globally and margins under relentless strain, waste is no longer a line item operators can afford to ignore. Winnow’s growing body of operational data shows that most commercial kitchens waste between 5 and 15 per cent of the food they purchase, yet reductions following proper measurement typically exceed 50 per cent.

That is not incremental savings. That is a structural change.

For chefs on the ground, the shift is both practical and cultural. Menus are being redesigned with tighter portion control. Prep processes are being re-engineered to reduce trim loss. Overproduction — once an accepted buffer against running out — is being replaced with data-led forecasting. And surplus that does arise is increasingly repurposed through creative re-use, staff meals, or structured donation programs.

For Winnow, the journey to $100 million in annual savings is only a waypoint. The company’s longer-term ambition is to help the hospitality industry prevent $1 billion in food waste every year. On the current trajectory, the target no longer seems rhetorical.

There is, too, a more profound lesson unfolding beneath the headline numbers. For an industry that prides itself on tradition, craft and service, the most profound sustainability gains are being delivered not through sweeping public pledges, but through the quiet discipline of daily measurement plate by plate, bin by bin.

Food waste, once dismissed as an unavoidable operational shadow, is being exposed for what it truly is: a design flaw that technology, leadership and professional pride can now correct.

And in kitchens from Sydney to Singapore, from Paris to Palm Springs, the message is settling in: the smartest savings in hospitality are no longer being found in the front of house. They are being carved out, invisibly but relentlessly, at the pass.