Food taken on the plate but not eaten is a problem at buffet breakfasts in large hotels. HS visited the Scandic Grand Central hotel next to the Central Railway Station to find out how much food goes to waste.
One medium egg, 53 grams.
That's how much food was left on the breakfast plate for one person on average in December in Scandic hotels in Finland. So some customers have a lot of food left over, a large part have nothing.
The number suddenly doesn't seem big. It's easy to eat too much with your eyes at the rich buffet tables. There may be a knob of butter, a slice of cold meat and some scrambled eggs left on the plate.
However, the number suddenly starts to double, because the number of customers is large.
Scandic has around 270 hotels in six different countries. In December, all these hotels lost 189,000 kilograms. The share of edible food was about 61 percent of this, or 111,000 kilograms.
In a year, this already makes more than a million kilos of edible food.
At the end of the story, readers' experiences with hotel buffets and waste have been compiled.
According to the Finnish Natural Resources Institute, Finnish hotels generate an average of 43 grams of plate residue per customer.
Is a normal weekday morning in Helsinki. Breakfast at the Scandic Grand Central hotel next to the main train station is bustling, but you don't have to wait in line. Many business travelers have already gone to eat when the rooster crows, and vacationers are just waking up in their rooms.
There is a sign in front of the breakfast guest.
“Good morning! Yesterday, there was 98 g of food waste per breakfast guest. Thank you for participating in the fight against food waste with us.”
Yesterday, food was laid out on the plate with relaxed wrists. Almost two eggs too many!
There is a sign in front of the breakfast guest that tells the amount of food waste per person from the previous day.
Hotel kitchen manager Ali Suviala says that the purpose of the sign is to arouse guests to think about the subject. As little food waste as possible is in everyone's interest, both economically and environmentally.
According to Suviala, combating waste starts with planning: what foods to order and how much. In the warehouse, it is important to ensure that the goods circulate in the correct order. The Fifo principle, i.e. “first in, first out” is a method where the products that have been in the warehouse the longest are used first.
“Stuff left lying around in the warehouse is the stupidest waste that can happen,” says Suviala.
However, waste is mainly caused by food left on plates and serving dishes. Appropriately small platters are an advantage when displaying food, because they are not so easily overfilled. The size of the plate also matters: a smaller one holds less. Suviala says that employees often quickly learn to predict how much and at what point more food should be served.
According to Suviala, it's not a good idea to go too fussy when displaying certain products. If the breakfast buffet runs out of coffee, Karelian pies or croissants, the feedback is immediate.
All Scandic hotels monitor food waste in the same way. Product development manager Torsti Uotila says that at Christmas there was more food waste than usual.
Different customer groups leave behind different looking plates. This is what Scandic's product development manager says Torsti Uotila.
Business travelers eat reasonably little, quickly and with an empty plate. Vacationers, on the other hand, have more time and appetite. They create more waste.
According to Uotila, the most difficult day in terms of breakfast waste is Sunday. However, some food left over from breakfast can, for example, be further processed or sold through the food waste application Resq Club.
Cultural differences are also visible in breakfast waste, says Uotila. Some have a habit of gathering food on the table as if it were their own buffet, in which case there may be a pile of completely untouched food in the middle of the table. Therefore, food waste is greatest in hotels that are popular with tourists and travelers.
It is however, it should be remembered that a large number of Finns conscientiously eat their plates empty – just as they were taught as children.
A pharmacist from Kuopio sipping coffee while reading a novel Jouko Savolainen is a perfect example of a commuter for whom hotel breakfast is a familiar routine.
Jouko Savolainen is a regular customer of the Scandic Grand Central Helsinki hotel, as he travels a lot for his work.
His breakfast usually repeats the same formula (porridge, yogurt, orange juice and coffee) and is proven (tasty and healthy), so there is usually no leftovers.
He says he doesn't eat bacon.
“I'm often on a business trip, so I have to make sure I eat healthy. Especially when you get older and everything gets stuck in your body.”
According to Torsti Uotila, there has been no significant change in the amount of waste in recent years, but there has been in the breakfast habits of hotel
guests. Breakfast buffets have become healthier than before.
“It's not today to put a terrible fat blast on a scarf at eight in the morning. Bacon and scrambled eggs are no longer the be-all and end-all.”
Breakfast guests are guided subtly.
Food that cannot be eaten, such as watermelon rinds, also causes waste. Eatable food is weighed separately at Scandic.
Product development manager Uotila is frustrated by the thought of how much work and energy is spent worldwide on food that is thrown into the trash.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, a third of all food produced globally is wasted. It is estimated to be around 1.3 billion tons per year.
“How many fewer trucks would need to be on the roads and how much less would it be necessary to grow fodder grain if the entire chain became lighter?” Uotila says.
Scandic's goal is to reduce food waste by 25 percent by the end of the decade. The comparison point is the year 2019. In other words, a quarter of the wasted chicken egg would be taken away.
Kitchen manager Ali Suviala scrapes food scraps into a bio waste container. All waste is weighed.
Breakfast is an essential part of the hotel experience, so you don't want to advise customers in hotels through blaming. Eating must be a pleasure.
“Our task is to act as if inconspicuously but actively to reduce losses.”
On the day of the interview 400 people attended breakfast at Scandic's Grand Central Helsinki hotel.
Food waste per customer was 32 grams.
Hooray, under the egg!
#Hotels #That39s #kilos #food #big #hotel39s #breakfast #waste
