You probably know all about the sumptuous, lavish brunch buffets that so many of the hotels and restaurants in Dubai offer. Maybe you’ve sampled some of them? If you have, you probably also wondered what happens to all the food after all the patrons have had their fill.
Overall, about a third of all the food produced is wasted. This means that about 1.3 billion tonnes of food are either wasted or lost each day.
It isn’t just perishables such as meat, fruit and veg that is wasted. Grain, cereals and prepared food also gets wasted. The waste is very costly. It is estimated that the wasted food costs the UAE economy as much as AED 13 billion each year. There is an ecological cost too: decomposing food produces methane which contributes to global warming.
When you head out to a lunch or brunch buffet, this could be a feast for your senses: delightful to look at, smell and taste. There are exotic items on the menu that may have been shipped in from great distances at great ecological cost: imported Norwegian salmon, Russian caviar, lobsters, exotic fruit and veg… the list goes on.
The menu will feature everything that the heart desires: exotic seafood, milkshake and donut walls, charcuterie corner, cheese counter, crab shack, live entertainment, the works! There is no real way to predict how much of this will get eaten on a given day. So each day, catering will err on the side of more rather than less. Hence, there will be significant waste food generated each day.
It claims to be the ‘kitchen of the future’. Winnow Solutions presents an app that helps reduce waste in kitchens and increase profitability. This helps to save money as well as time. AI enabled Winnow Vision is a app that tracks and records what is thrown away and how much is thrown away. It then analyses the data to offer insight into the volume, value, and environmental impact of the waste to help save up to 50% of what got wasted.
Dubai based brands such as IHG hotels, AccorHotels and Emaar Hospitality's Armani Hotel are all currently using this application to reduce food waste. This is helping cut costs and also reduce waste of food each day by a significant amount. Now hotels and restaurants are also trying to reduce waste by employing other tactics: the buffet displays feature smaller portions. Patrons are encouraged to share servings and order them on to the table as required.
Apart from using technology to reduce waste, the UAE Food Bank is a charitable initiative that helps to not only reduce waste but also redistributes excess food before it spoils. It involves government agencies and charitable institutions to create a network to store, pack and distribute excess food. Knowing that these initiatives are in place, you will probably enjoy your next sumptuous Dubai brunch even more… guilt-free!
Do you have something interesting you would like to share? Write to us at [email protected]
