A hotel’s restaurant has launched a new menu aimed at reducing food waste in its kitchens.

Hilton’s Doubletree Brighton Metropole hotel has introduced a zero-waste menu which sees them use food items creatively to minimise what goes in the bin.

The new menu will see chicken waste used to make sauces and left-over breakfast pastries used in bread-and-butter pudding for dessert, among other innovations.

Darren Pryer, head chef at the Brighton seafront hotel, said: “Zero waste is something that we as a kitchen have embraced, as waste in general in the kitchen is a priority for us all and we need to do more to control it.

“It also enables me to challenge the young chefs in the team to become more creative in their thinking when creating new dishes to avoid or minimise waste.”

Hilton says it wants to reduce the amount of rubbish sent to landfill by hotels such as the Metropole by 50 per cent.

The menu was launched on Stop Food Waste Day on April 24 and will be available for a week.

According to UNEP’s Food Waste Index Report 2024*, a staggering one billion tonnes of food is wasted each year, equating to one fifth of all food available to consumers. Notably, the food services industry contributes over a quarter of this waste.

Dishes will utilise a range of innovative cookery techniques to showcase the potential for commercial operators to implement simple steps to significantly reduce waste, including:

  • Root-to-shoot and nose-to-tail cookery: For the Lemon and herb roasted chicken supreme, they will use the whole animal, keeping the breast as main element of the dish, and the carcasses to be made into a sauce.
  • Rescuing and repurposing leftover food: For the pudding, we using leftover Danishes from breakfast service to create the Posh Bread and Butter Pudding.

Highlights from the menu will include a steamed Fillet of Seabass, Clams, Mussels, Reduction of Bouillabaisse

Hilton plans to roll out the initiative across more hotels in Europe, the Middle East and Africa over the coming year. Alongside the current pilot scheme, a further 25 hotels in the UK will also launch a new low waste menu, continuing the brand's "year-round commitment to waste reduction and marking an important step in its long-term ambition to eliminate all possible food waste".