The largest serving bowl does not always need to go on the buffet, a tray of fried rice does not need to be cooked all at once, and broccoli stem does not belong in the bin.
At Hilton Garden Inn Jakarta Taman Palem, small decisions like these are changing the way the culinary team thinks about food waste. Since introducing Winnow in October 2024, the team has reduced food waste by 61%, equivalent to 7,000 meals saved annually.
Behind those numbers, the team has been learning to question familiar kitchen routines, understand what guests actually consume, and make better use of the ingredients already in front of them. The result is not simply less waste. It is a different way of working.
One of the biggest opportunities was breakfast, where preparing extra food can often feel like the safest option in a busy hotel kitchen. No chef wants a guest to arrive at the buffet and find an empty dish, but preparing for the maximum number of guests can also mean significant quantities of food are left at the end of service.
Winnow’s data gave the culinary team a clearer picture of what was coming back uneaten and where overproduction was happening, prompting the team to rethink how much food needed to be prepared at any one time. Instead of cooking everything at once, chefs began working in smaller batches, watching the buffet more closely and replenishing dishes according to what guests were actually choosing.
That change has an added benefit for the guest experience. Preparing smaller quantities more frequently means food spends less time sitting on the buffet, helping the team maintain freshness while reducing what remains when service ends.
The same thinking applies to the size of the serving dishes themselves. Rather than automatically using the largest bowls and filling them for display, the team can use smaller serving bowls and replenish them as needed, maintaining the abundance guests expect from a buffet without producing unnecessary excess.
The shift is also happening at the prep table, where the team is taking a closer look at parts of ingredients that might previously have been discarded.
Broccoli is a simple example. While the florets were traditionally the part destined for the plate, the team now looks at the stem as an ingredient in its own right, using it in soups, vegetable dishes, or purées rather than automatically treating it as trimming waste.
The same thinking applies to cauliflower and other vegetables, encouraging chefs to consider the ingredient as a whole and ask what else can be done with it before anything is discarded.
That mindset has also changed how the team prepares for service. Vegetables intended for grilling, for example, do not always need to be cooked in advance. By keeping them prepared but raw until they are required, the kitchen retains greater flexibility. If demand changes, those ingredients can still be incorporated into another appropriate dish rather than ending the day as cooked leftovers.
Individually, these may seem like small adjustments, but repeated across hundreds of covers and months of service, they begin to add up.
Perhaps the most important change is happening among the people working in the kitchen, where reducing food waste is increasingly treated as part of being a chef rather than as a separate sustainability exercise.
Young chefs and trainees are encouraged to think beyond cutting, cooking, and plating, and to consider the decisions that come before and after. How many guests are expected? How much should be prepared first? What can be cooked later? Could trimming become part of another dish? What does the waste data tell the team about yesterday’s service?
For younger chefs in particular, these questions matter as habits learned early in a culinary career can travel from one kitchen to another. Teaching someone to think twice before discarding an ingredient, or to question whether everything needs to be cooked at once, can therefore have an impact long after a single service is over.
A 61% reduction in food waste and 7,000 meals saved annually are significant results, but they did not come from one dramatic intervention. They came from a series of changes that became habits. For the culinary team at Hilton Garden Inn Jakarta Taman Palem, the advice for other kitchens is equally practical: cook at the last minute whenever possible, measure waste, and use every part of an ingredient. Once a kitchen understands where its waste comes from, it can begin to improve.
It is a simple philosophy, but one that reflects how the team has achieved its results. Food waste reduction is not defined by a single initiative or one dramatic change. Instead, it is built through decisions made during preparation and service every single day.