www.calodging.com July/August 2022 11 The outcomes of this intervention project have the potential to transform the events industry. Participants in the intervention project will receive paid-for consultant support to train their staff on food waste prevention measures, audit their waste streams, and work with sales teams to develop, test, and institutionalize new event agreements between clients and food service providers. WWF is still seeking hotel and event space partners interested in participating; for more information, please contact tara.mcnerney@wwfus.org. A resource for hotels looking to reduce food waste on their own comes in the form of Hotel Kitchen. (See HotelKitchen.org.) In 2017, WWF worked with the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA) and a group of industry leaders to develop and launch Hotel Kitchen, a comprehensive platform for hotel properties to address operational food waste from many angles. The pilots and research that informed the creation of Hotel Kitchen uncovered key drivers of food waste in hotel operations, including menu design, surplus ingredient and meal preparation, overage from meetings and events, a lack of local partners for food recovery or food waste hauling, and others. For example, Hotel Kitchen lists a few steps for how to include waste reduction measures into event contracts, a few of them being: 9Include a final set time for buffets in contracts and BEOs. 9Require updated guest counts 10 and 5 days prior to the event, and day of. 9Add donation partner agreements into event contracts so all agree where food will go after event. 9Decrease overage guarantee. 9Include an overage menu for unexpected attendance instead of a percentage of overproduction on each dish. Targeted resources are available including a free video training series, a quick start Champion's Guide to addressing property food waste, a Toolkit for Communicating Food Waste to Guests, a Waste Measurement Methodology, and more.
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