Plant-to-plate thinking

• Food-waste warrior volunteers to be a YBIF ambassador after positive experience with programme, and leads by example
• Communicating with guests about the food on their plate and its value is important

Sustainability is a passion and a top priority for owner and manager Mike Morgan of Llansantffraed Court Hotel. Mike, his enthusiastic kitchen porter, and other staff were highly motivated and enthused by the 'Your Business is Food; don't throw it away' (YBIF) materials. After reviewing the amount of food thrown away (Step 1), they immediately put in place an action plan (Step 2), and introduced house policy changes such as controlling the buffet portions to help reduce excessive plate waste at the daily breakfast service.

The owner believes businesses can develop and learn best practices from each other and, and after seeing the impacts delivered, was keen to share the YBIF resources with local hotel and restaurant colleagues (Step 3 celebrate success). He volunteered to be an 'ambassador' for the roll-out of the project, an offer that the British Hospitality Association and WRAP Cymru were delighted to accept.

The hotel has a greenhouse and walled kitchen garden, which provides homegrown produce, from asparagus and broad beans to many different types of fruit including peaches and berries. The centrepiece of the garden is a ‘Ridan’ tubular composter, which converts food waste and other organic waste into compost for the kitchen garden.

Key impacts

The introduction of YBIF rekindled enthusiasm for the hotel’s ethos of minimising food waste and motivated staff to participate. To reduce plate waste during the breakfast buffet shift, the team closely monitored the breakfast station, ensuring it was constantly topped up but not overstocked. Meals on the breakfast menu have also been broken down into separate components. This now enables the customer to order and hence receive what they are going to eat and helps prevent them from over-ordering.

Although all food waste was being recycled in the hotel’s composter, Llansantffraed was still keen to participate in the trials to seek new initiatives to reduce waste.

A new kitchen garden is another positive and much appreciated by guests. High-end produce such as asparagus is grown in there; surplus runner beans are kept at reception for visitors to take home and guests areregularly given gifts of vegetables or seasonal fruit. The greenhouse grows salad items out of season, boosting quality and reducing waste which saves money and resources. The manager has plans to expand this effort.

Other food-service businesses are encouraged to try the YBIF three-day tracking sheet and calculator to give them insights into how much food they are throwing away and what it costs their business. For even more insights and detail, the seven-day tracking sheet over a month, with YBIF calculator tool helps calculate purchase costs and true waste cost values for each business. Access to the full suite of YBIF resources is available in the source information section.