Rethinking food waste: lessons from best practice

Abstract

Preventing food waste across the hospitality industry requires a drastic rethinking of food waste. However, to date, there has been limited attention given to the creative approaches taken by hospitality businesses to address the problem. By studying examples of food waste best practice, this study aims to identify the creative ways in which hospitality businesses prevent food waste. Applying an antenarrative lens, we demonstrate how sustainability-led businesses tell three food stories –food as a resource, back to our roots, and rethinking food waste–each of which has an underlying food waste narrative that incorporate the eco-efficiency and appreciation framings of food waste previously identified within existing literature. These narratives are coming together to create a new food waste narrative in which food waste is anything that cannot be made edible through creative cooking and preservation, and which is not then disposed of in a way that creates value. These insights contribute to the literature by demonstrating how rethinking what is edible results in creative practices to prevent food waste, whilst also raising questions about the future direction of hospitality food waste research.