Today’s guests are looking for experiences when traveling, and hotel F&B outlets are catching on. From chef-driven unique dishes to open kitchens, F&B has become more than waiter service and a basic menu.
Sustainability has also made its way into restaurant kitchens—a concept guests, especially the younger generations, are more interested in than ever before. But the implementation of green initiatives such as consumable plate ware and carbon reduction comes at a price. It is up to the hotelier to strike the right balance between sustainability and profitability.
A panel of industry executives discussed this issue during the latest Hotel Business Hot Topics session, “Conscious Minds: Optimizing the Food & Beverage Supply Chain for Profitability and Sustainability,” in partnership with Entegra.
Glenn Haussman, founder/host, No Vacancy Live podcast, moderated the session, which included panelists Megan Brumagim, VP, ESG, Choice Hotels International Inc.; John Csukor, senior director/head of culinary, Entegra; Brian Hanna, procurement manager, sustainability & supplier diversity, Accor; and Dean Wendel, VP, food & beverage, Concord Hospitality.
Brumagim opened the session by pointing out that sustainability is no longer just “nice to have,” adding, “It’s a business imperative. We are seeing consumer data saying more and more consumers want to see hotels focused on sustainability, and that half of corporate RFPs today are asking sustainability-related questions. So hotels need to take action to really walk the talk and show how they’re implementing sustainability on property.”
Hanna has also seen a rise in interest of sustainability in the meetings and events space.
“Something that I see come up quite often in corporate RFPs where you have major clients who have their own vision and their own commitments that they’ve made to sustainability and diversity, and they’re making decisions on which hotels they support based on those responses,” he said.
For Wendel, sustainability starts with concept development. “Our development team does a great job in making sure that we keep as much as we can if we’re repurposing a space,” he said.
For meeting planners and event planners, the Concord Hospitality executive explained, “It’s a big deal if you can show them at the end of their event what you are able to do on a carbon offset report. At the end of a three- or four-day session, you could be able to give them a report that said, ‘Throughout this event, we saved X amount of trees and had 385 pounds of carbon offset.’”
Ultimately, Csukor commented, implementing sustainable initiatives is not an overnight undertaking. He cited statistics from a recent First Insight report, which found that 73% of Gen Zers are willing to pay more for services and products that have been highly influenced by sustainable practices.
“All of the executives here know what a project it is to take on the behaviors to make these foundational changes,” he said, adding, “The days of being shy are over. Show me and take credit for what you’re doing. I think it’s important to communicate and catch the eye of those for which this is really fundamentally important.”
Eco-friendly F&B initiatives
When it comes to sustainability in F&B, Wendel brought up the idea that guests will pay more if the quality of offerings is above par, but the hotel still needs to make money.
“It’s going to cost you more to bring all of this stuff in,” he said. “ It used to be about getting the cheapest products. You could get a container then, and it was 13 cents. Now, you’re paying 75 cents for a compostable one, but that’s what you have to do.”
He added that portion size could help keep the costs in check. “We need to right-size protein portions,” he said. “We don’t need massive 14-16-oz. steaks. We have to be conscious about what we’re putting on the plates and look at what’s coming back. Are they eating everything? If they are, then maybe they’re eating too much, and it’s up to us to educate everybody from the dishwashers and stewards, all the way up to the directors of sales and catering directors on how this is going to work.”
Recycling is another sustainable practice that hotels implement. Csukor brought up the concept of upstream and downstream recycling.
“Upstream is using post-consumer materials to create something brand new from it,” said the Entegra executive. “Downstream is what do you with it once it’s been consumed. As a hotel, which has a lot more control over energy use and so forth, this statistic is probably not perfect, but it’s close. About two-thirds of a business’ sustainability is dictated by its suppliers, so it’s all the stuff that comes in the back door. That figure skews a bit with hotels because there are so many rooms and lots of water consumption. But the challenge is to apply that upstream and downstream to ourselves.”
He added, “So think about everything you’re bringing in. Are you selecting a good packaging company that’s providing you with product that is coming from post-consumer? Are you selecting produce that’s in season? Are you selecting meats that are raised in responsible avenues? Are they themselves selecting sustainable practices? So that’s your upstream notification. The rest I think we’re all getting like: How do we recycle? How do we check those programs? Are they really recycling? Are they just dumping into one hole? That’s a project I think everyone should take on with their waste removal system. Do that audit and really check into it.”
A large hotel company like Choice, Brumagim noted, can use its vast resources to not only benefit “the broader ecosystem of owners” in its portfolio, but can also use its scale to “develop better pricing and make sure that they’re getting the most competitive offerings.”
She also pointed out the trend of supply-chain partnerships solving cost issues. As an example, she offered the Radisson Blu Mall of America. “The hotel became the first hotel in the world to have a new type of technology called Carbon X, which is a small-scale carbon capture device that attaches to the hotel’s water heater and helps the hotel lower the cost of heating its water,” she said. “At the same time, it’s sucking out carbon dioxide so it’s capturing that carbon and producing a useful byproduct in the form of pearlash. This was a partnership between the brand, the hotel team, the local utility provider and the technology provider. It didn’t cost the hotel any money to install it because that was paid for out of the utility provider’s R&D budget.”
Carbon emissions aren’t the only harmful byproducts hotels have to deal with. As Hanna put it, “If food waste was a country, it would have the third highest emissions in the entire world.”
He added, “In the U.S., about 40% of food produced is wasted, and in the hospitality industry, around 25% of food purchased is thrown away. This is a really key point when there’s concerns about the rise of food prices. Food is inflated at a much higher price than most other products, and the way that these costs can be recouped and more can be spent on quality products is by looking at what’s coming in as well as going out.”
There are a lot of different touchpoints where hotels can reduce that waste. “You can reduce how much you’re ordering by doing the proper forecast and knowing who’s coming in and what you need to purchase,” Hanna offered. “You can look at what’s been wasted in prep. It can be very easy to think, ‘We have all this food waste. We need to get food digesters or dehydrators so that we spend less money on landfills.’ But, in reality, a lot more of that money can be saved by just not buying that product in the first place. If you’re throwing away 25% of your food, reduce that down to 10% or 5%. Well, that 10% increase in inflation is not that big of a problem anymore, and it allows you to put more money into quality ingredients.”
To help in this effort, Csukor brought up an Entegra strategic partner called Leanpath which “creates a behavior of real awareness of your waste. It’s not fixing the physicality of the waste. It’s creating a social and mental awareness of how we prep and what we prep, and that may be just the knife cuts or the machinery that we’re using.”
While all of these green initiatives put the hotel on the right path to attracting eco-conscious consumers, today’s guests are also seeking experiences based around the property’s location, such as design elements and amenities highlighting the area’s culture. Local cuisine can also play a part in that concept.
“If your hotels are in different locations, when you have that commitment to local food, it serves two purposes,” said Hanna. “One, you’re supporting your local community, but also you’re making use of a product that’s in your region, which means that product is being transported over less distance.”
Wendel pointed out that hoteliers should get the local producers’ names out there so that guests are aware of where the food came from.
“Put their names on the menu and have them come to the hotel,” he said. “I think one of the most impactful things that you can do is let the small producers and farmers come to the property and let them see how you’re using their product. They’re going to really elevate their level of care in what they’re giving you.”
