The Sustainable Chef

The Environment in Culinary Arts, Restaurants, and Hospitality

Stefan Gössling, C. Michael Hall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781351740234
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

This book provides the first systematic and accessible text for students of hospitality and the culinary arts that directly addresses how more sustainable restaurants and commercial food services can be achieved.

Food systems receive growing attention because they link various sustainability dimensions. Restaurants are at the heart of these developments, and their decisions to purchase regional foods, or to prepare menus that are healthier and less environmentally problematic, have great influence on food production processes. This book is systematically designed around understanding the inputs and outputs of the commercial kitchen as well as what happens in the restaurant from the perspective of operators, staff and the consumer. The book considers different management approaches and further looks at the role of restaurants, chefs and staff in the wider community and the positive contributions that commercial kitchens can make to promoting sustainable food ways.

Case studies from all over the world illustrate the tools and techniques helping to meet environmental and economic bottom lines. This will be essential reading for all students of hospitality and the culinary arts.

Chapter 1 Introduction The advantages of a sustainable kitchen

DOI: 10.4324/9781315187488-1

Introduction

‘Green’, ‘sustainable’, ‘local’ and ‘organic’ foods are major menu items for many restaurants and are a focal point not only of positioning and promotion but also of consumer demand. But what do these terms mean, especially when they seem to be used so widely? And, if they are speaking to how the hospitality and food services sector responds to issues of climate and environmental change then how do managers, chefs and staff know how to apply these concepts in the kitchen? This chapter provides an introduction to these issues by highlighting how concepts of sustainability are important not only for a greener kitchen but also for the bottom line. The chapter provides an explanation for the design of the book, the inherent difficulties that emerge when it comes to examining sustainability in the kitchen and in the front of house and discusses how it can be used by stressing that there are many ways in which any kitchen, restaurant or foodservice operation can reduce its impact on the environment.

In this book, we will often use the terms ‘sustainable restaurant’ or ‘sustainable food services’. This, in part, reflects the wide range of food-related businesses and organizations that exist. This book focuses on the sustainability of the hospitality and food services sector, which includes all outlets that serve food and/or drinks for immediate intake in an out-of-home setting (Dhir et al., 2020). This means that the notion of food services includes both profit/commercial and cost-driven/non-commercial organizations (Marthinsen et al., 2012; WRAP, 2020). The wide range of foodservice operations that this includes is illustrated in Table 1.1, which shows the estimates of food waste for premises in the UK by the different sectors.

Table 1.1 Number of premises and food waste arising by hospitality and food services sector in the UK, 2015 and 2018

Sector	Number of premises 2015	Number of premises 2018	Food waste 2015 (t)	Food waste 2018 (t)
Profit sector
Quick-Service Restaurant	37,000	39,000	103,000	106,000
Restaurants	56,000	63,000	253,000	289,000
Pubs and clubs	40,000	46,000	202,000	234,000
Hotels	13,000	13,000	83,000	88,000
Leisure, transport and sport	14,000	15,000	60,000	61,000
Total profit sector			702,000	779,000
	Number of people or other unit 2015	Number of people or other unit 2018
Cost sector
Education, of which:			125,000	127,000
Primary schools (all sizes)	5,356,000	5,575,000	66,000	68,000
Secondary schools (all sizes)	3,790,000	3,869,000	28,000	28,000
Further education (all sizes)	1,362,000	940,000	5,000	4,000
Higher education (all sizes)	2,092,000	2,343,000	2,000	3,000
Other education			24,000	25,000
Health, of which:			120,000	120,000
Nursing and residential	535,000	535,000	59,000	59,000
Hospitals (catering units)	1,000	1,000	61,000	61,000
Services, of which:			65,000	62,000
Prisons	95,000	85,000	19,000	17,000
Military bases (number)	1,000	1,000	46,000	46,000
Staff catering (number of premises offering)	8,000	8,000	22,000	21,000
Total cost sector			332,000	331,000
Source: WRAP (2020)

In general terms, the profit sector includes hotels, restaurants and cafés (HORECA), and commercial catering. Restaurants include establishments serving different cuisines and food styles, as well as quick-service restaurants (QSR) also referred to as fast-food outlets that offer both eat-in or takeaway at various locations, as well as cafés. Hotels include accommodation providers such as luxury, business or budget hotels, bed & breakfasts, catered apartments and hostels. Both restaurants and hotels also cover catering services. Other for-profit foodservice businesses include commercial catering, such as that available at events and convention centres as well as for clients. Cost-driven or institutional foodservice operations include the health care sector (hospitals, nursing homes and care centres); education (preschools, primary and secondary schools, tertiary education institutions, colleges and universities) and staff catering such as canteens and cafeterias located in workplaces for feeding employees (Dhir et al., 2020).

The wide range of businesses, organizations and institutions involved in food services means that the sector is inherently complex with different drivers that will affect how notions of sustainability can be implemented (Filimonau & De Coteau, 2019). For example, while restaurants can consider food donation as a way of dealing with waste, hospitals will usually not have that option available to them due to the risk of infection (Dhir et al., 2020). A further complicating factor is that as a result of outsourcing many of the food services in public hospitals and educational facilities are now provided by commercial catering businesses (Gray et al., 2017; Carino et al., 2020). Therefore, Dhir et al. (2020) suggest that hospitality and food services comprise three main segments: (a) a business segment, including accommodations and food service at hotels, restaurants, cafés, workplace canteens, inflight catering, snack bars, coffee shops and pubs; (b) an education segment, including nurseries, primary schools, secondary schools, tertiary education centres, colleges and universities and (c) a health care segment, comprising hospitals, elder care, retirement homes and nursing homes. In this book, we will primarily concentrate on the business segment, although, given the substantial overlap that exists, we will also be referring to examples from the education and health care segments.

Environmentally friendly eating

There is no single definition of environmentally friendly eating, but usually environmentally friendly eating is regarded as something that leads to one or all of the following:

• a reduction in the throughput of resources (e.g., energy, water and other resources);
• the conservation of biodiversity; and/or
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