Food Waste Intelligence

Two Marriott hotels in Costa Rica, the Costa Rica Marriott Hacienda Belen (above) and Los Suenos Marriott Resort, launched the Leanpath food waste prevention platform last year and have already reduced the value of their food waste by 25%.

This significant pace of food waste reduction results puts the hotels in line to easily meet Marriott International’s Serve 360 corporate-wide sustainability goal of cutting food waste in half by 2025.

“Both hotels are highly focused on sustainability,” said Food and Beverage Cost Supervisor for the two hotels, Jose Venegas. “Preventing food waste reduces our impact on the planet and also makes us more efficient with our food budgets.”

Leanpath’s food waste tracking devices allow high-production food and beverage operations to understand what food is being wasted and why. Leanpath's analytics platform identifies high-impact opportunities for food waste reduction and sets automated goals to break a large food waste problem into manageable wins. Most kitchens cut their food waste in half with Leanpath within a year, leading to significant financial and environmental savings.

“Leanpath data is priceless,” says Venegas. “It helps us understand where to focus our efforts in reducing food waste and it keeps the team more conscious about controlling waste as a part of the kitchen culture.”

One-third of the world’s food production goes to waste every year, with a quarter of that waste coming from the foodservice industry, according to the United Nations. The financial cost of this waste is estimated at $1 trillion annually. If food waste were a country, it would rank third in greenhouse gas emissions.

Venegas and his team’s efforts have not gone unnoticed. In April 2023, Marriott International launched the Food Waste Reduction Rally to encourage sites to share their food waste data and best practices in reducing food waste. Costa Rica Marriott Hacienda Belen was recognized as the leader in food waste reduction for the Caribbean and Latin America region.