Marriott Hotels in the UK, Ireland and Nordics has revealed it has implemented a food waste reduction initiative in collaboration with Winnow AI, across 53 of its managed hotels.
The new technology partnership enables the hotels to monitor and minimise food waste in kitchens.
Food & Beverage (F&B) teams have worked with the team at Winnow AI to successfully reduce Marriott Hotels food waste by 25% within the first six months of 2024.
This move is a notable advance in the company’s sustainability objectives, and goes towards addressing the “pressing issue of food waste” across the hospitality industry.
By integrating the Winnow AI platform in all 53 hotel food outlets, Marriott’s F& teams now have access to real-time data on food consumption and waste, enabling smarter decisions around ordering, menu planning, and portion sizes.
The technology is powered by the same AI chip that is used in driverless cars and uses 320 million data points to train the model it works off.
It will then triangulate data based off of weight, cost, etc to provide the team will detailed insight reports the next day.
The 25% reduction in food waste in six months is equivalent to 486 tonnes of CO2 emissions being released into the atmosphere.
The flagship Marriott hotel for this initiative – the London Heathrow Marriott Hotel – has managed to reduce its EPC rating from an F to a B, with an aim of achieving an A at some point after the hotels have installed solar panels to the roof.
Solar panels and a windmill on the roof are also used to power the exterior Marriott signs.
As part of its wider project to become more sustainable, the hotel’s efforts extend to reducing energy usage by replacing all lights to LED lighting, installing voltage optimisation, and generating its own energy with use of CHP Plant.
The hotel installed 23 additional electricity meters, with half-hourly readings monitored and analysed to optimise equipment performance.
The has a green house on the roof to grow produce and a self-sustaining hydrophonics room in the kitchen that it uses to grow its garnishes for the dishes the kitchen produces.
The chefs at the hotel have also come up with recipes that utilise previous waste, including a banana skin burger, coffee ground soap for guests, and pineapple skin that is boiled down to make juice for cocktails.
