Limburg hospitality industry reduces food waste

Limburg hospitality businesses are gearing up for this year's Food Waste Challenge. With the help of an online program, they are discovering how much can be saved in eight weeks, by wasting less.

Prior year participants managed to waste 23 percent less food. This resulted in an average savings of 10,000 euros per participant. The first batch of hospitality businesses in Limburg started this year's challenge last week. Another group will start on April 6.

© L1 (Gerard Pansier)

CO2 emissions saved

"Last year, 17 horeac businesses participated and saved more than a ton of CO2 emissions. That's 240,000 kilometers of driving your car," says Iris van Scheppingen of Wastewatchers, they help hospitality businesses reduce food waste through deployment of software. The main goal: "The switch. Becoming conscious in the business. Also include your customers, your guests."

Portions

In Roermond at Burgers Enzo, they succeeded. They competed last year. "The main thing we learned is that we actually brought quite large portions. So guests were full pretty quickly. Now we weigh out portions and do the bowls less full. It goes exactly on and we just have less waste," says business manager Coco van der Hoek.

Insight

Numbers show, she says, that instead of 40 grams of waste, there is now only 20 grams wasted per guest. The staff only really saw during the challenge how much was actually left over and thrown away. "That's when the insight really came. Especially for the people in the kitchen, who always thought, 'let me do a little more anyway because that looks nice and big.'"

Less bread

Also at another participant from last year, Chateau Sint Gerlach in Houthem, the portions have become smaller and the breakfast, for example, is a little less elaborate. "For breakfast, we were at one point at a waste of 1.25 euros per person and we have reduced that to 75 cents per person," says executive chef Otto Nijenhuis.

He says this has been achieved with small interventions, such as a smaller assortment of bread and by replenishing the buffets more often. "We made lists for the cooks. If 50 people come, I bake off that much bread. As a result, you could see anyway that there was a huge difference in food-waste." Nijenhuis knows the savings could be even greater if they stopped offering breakfast in buffet form. "But not every guest wants that," he says. "So you will also have to educate a guest and explain why we prefer not to serve a buffet. We see more and more guests going along with that."

Special app

In Roermond, they also save by using an app to prepare dishes so that the right amounts are always used. They also save more energy by using the griddle and fryer differently.

No waste broth

In Saint Gerlach, the old-fashioned chicken broth is now called no waste broth because the chicken has been replaced by leftover vegetables. Those leftovers are also increasingly used in dishes and drinks. They also use only products of the season and have their own vegetable garden at the chateau.

The Food Waste Challenge is organized in Limburg by Wastewatchers in cooperation with LIOF. The event where this year's results will be announced is on June 3.