AccorHotels UK & Ireland has partnered with Too Good To Go, the world’s largest online marketplace for surplus food, as part of its bid to reduce food waste by 30 per cent by 2020.
It is the first hotel group to join the platform in the UK.
Twenty-five of the group’s hotels around the UK have joined the Too Good To Go platform since January, in cities including London, Cardiff, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Edinburgh.
The move follows a successful partnership between AccorHotels and Too Good To Go since September 2016 in other European countries which has so far saved over 32,000 meals from going to waste across 208 hotels, equivalent to 65 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
The free Too Good To Go app connects restaurants, hotels, supermarkets and other food retailers with surplus food available with local consumers who purchase, collect and enjoy it.
When users log into the app they see a list of participating outlets, all of which are GPS-located so people can find the closest available food first.
They can then purchase a meal through the app at a reduced price and are given a collection window in which to retrieve it.
Shane Munro, vice president of food and beverage, AccorHotels UK & Ireland, said: “Reducing food waste is one of the key focuses of our Planet21 sustainable development programme, and this partnership is a great way of contributing to this.
“It helps us to use surplus food from our restaurants in a productive way that helps people, minimises food waste, and allows us to increase our connection with the local communities that we work in.
“As we integrate more of our hotels and more consumers get to know about the service it will have a bigger and bigger impact.”
Among the key targets for the Planet21 programme’s current five-year period are a 30 per cent reduction in food waste and the introduction of 1,000 urban vegetable gardens in the group’s hotels.
AccorHotels also recently pledged to discontinue the use of plastic straws in its cafes, restaurants and bars across its 125 managed hotels in the UK by June, and said it is working with franchise partners to do the same in its 113 franchised hotels.
Too Good To Go is the world’s largest online marketplace for surplus food, whose mission is to create a world where all food produced is food consumed.
It operates in eight countries and has saved over four million meals globally, including over 165,000 in the UK so far.
Jamie Crummie, co-founder, Too Good To Go, commented: “AccorHotels is the first hotel group to partner with us in the UK and we are excited about the difference we can make to food waste in the hospitality industry.
“Our platform not only reduces the food waste and carbon footprint of the businesses we partner with – it also engages consumers in the fight against food waste and encourages them to make changes in other areas of their lives.”