Regional and sustainable: responsible food handling

Project results

• Intensive training of F&B employees in three pilot hotels on the Canary Islands F&B employees:on the topic of "sustainable food"

• Measurement and analysis of food waste in the pilot hotels during the observation period from May to June 2019 in the measurement areas of storage, production waste, overproduction and plate returns

• Development of individual measures to reduce food waste by changing internal processes, behavioral patterns and improved food processing

• Introduction of show cooking stations where portions can be adjusted according to guests' wishes.

• Smaller portions on the buffet to reduce plate waste

• Optimization of communication between the individual departments such as kitchen and service for further savings, e.g. monitoring of waiters:inside how many guests have already eaten in order to keep a closer eye on the quantities of food still required.

• The renewed measurement after implementation of the measures showed a significant reduction in food waste by an average of 28%. One of the pilot hotels was even able to reduce its waste by 35%.

• Transfer of effective measures to the other 18 hotels of the FTI GROUP's Meeting Point Hotels on the Canary Islands

Link to Futouris' industry project "Sustainable Food"

The successful Futouris industry project "Sustainable Food" has shown that sensitizing and training employees is one of the key factors in reducing food waste:inside is one of the key factors and the basis for anchoring sustainable F&B processes and sustainable behavior at work. The project also recognized that continuous food waste measurements contribute to the prevention and reduction of avoidable food waste.

In its project, FTI built on the knowledge and measures gained in the industry project and transferred them to the 18 FTI GROUP Meeting Point hotels in the Canary Islands.

Training of hotel employees

The first phase of the project involved raising awareness of sustainable food among hotel employees and building a foundation for the subsequent project phases. For this reason, five employees from the F&B departments of the three pilot hotels Cactus Garden on Fuerteventura, Playa Bonita on Gran Canaria and Bahía Fañabe on Tenerife and three other representatives of the Meeting Point Hotels group were initially trained by the project partner COMPASS.

The training includes information on sustainable purchasing, taking into account local and seasonal food, as well as practical approaches to avoiding food waste. The F&B employees who have already been trained then pass on their knowledge to their colleagues so that all hotel employees in this area have the same level of knowledge about sustainability in the kitchen.

Avoiding and reducing food waste

In the second phase of the project, the focus was on avoiding and reducing food waste. In a first step, the food waste in each of the three participating Meeting Point hotels was recorded and measured using the online analysis tool of the partner United Against Waste e.V. (UAW). Following an analysis by UAW, the measurements were presented to the hotel teams as part of a workshop and the operational processes currently used in the hotels were recorded.

Based on these results, the participating hotels worked with partner UAW to develop individual measures to reduce food waste. The measures developed were then tested in the three pilot hotels. Food waste was then measured again over a period of four weeks in order to document the success of the implemented measures and make any necessary improvements.

Once the measurement phases were complete, it was examined how the successfully implemented and effective reduction measures could be transferred to the other 18 hotels in the Meeting Point hotel group on the Canary Islands.

The successfully tested measures to reduce food waste were published and made available to Futouris and Futouris members.