The Data-Driven Kitchen

“We need to challenge the status quo.”

Waste is a natural by-product of preparing food at scale, but it currently costs the hospitality sector around $100 billion per year. Now, AI technology is beginning to transform our understanding of what’s possible.

Can AI drive systems change in kitchens? And could accelerated technology provide opportunities to reduce costs, improve efficiency and cut global carbon emissions?

This is the mission of David Jackson and the team at Winnow, a food technology solutions provider. The company is working with chefs in over 90 countries to cut kitchen waste in half.

Winnow offers a range of kitchen supercomputer solutions. The company has trained an AI model to recognise food as it’s being thrown away, using a data set of over 320 million images. It can identify each individual item and record its weight and cost in real-time.

This simple-to-use technology allows kitchen teams to focus on specific areas that are ripe for change. Winnow prints out daily reports that pinpoint exactly where waste occurs and the cost to the business. As David and the team like to say, “What gets measured gets managed.”

Winnow are working in international hotel restaurants in almost 3,000 locations. The company’s global client base includes Hilton, Marriott and Accor – all Sustainable Markets Initiative members – as well as home furnishings retailer IKEA and several major food service businesses.

Clients are reporting impressive results. In 2024, Marriott UK and Ireland announced it had cut food waste by 25 percent in more than 50 hotels. Hilton has adopted ‘bin free Monday’ across a selection of its hotels. This initiative sees bins removed and kitchen teams challenged to incorporate every part of the ingredients into their menus and meals.

As well as the substantial cost and time benefits, Winnow is helping commercial food producers to reach sustainability targets. The company’s tech provided analysis for a recent white paper on decarbonising hotel food systems released by World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance in collaboration with Iberostar Group and the Sustainable Markets Initiative.

If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions, explains David. Today, Winnow are saving somewhere in the region of 87,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. To put this into context, it’s enough energy to power the homes of a small town for an entire year.

Introducing smart technology into commercial kitchens supports the bottom line and the planet.

To learn more about Winnow, visit their website.