Melco Resorts & Entertainment has successfully cut plate waste
in employee dining areas by up to 35%.
In 2020, Melco rolled out the Artificial
Intelligence (A.I.) system, Winnow Vision, across its properties to
lead the charge against food waste in employee dining room kitchens
to target overproduced waste. Tracking detailed food waste data
enabled the teams to identify post-consumer waste (i.e. plate
waste) as the main source of food wastage in employee dining
rooms.
To directly tackle plate waste, Melco
collaborated with Winnow and London School of Economics (LSE) on a
project to combine Winnow’s new post-consumer waste measurement
product, Winnow Sense – a touchless system designed to measure
plate waste, with a study to monitor consumer behavior.
A series of interventions were designed by the
LSE Department of Psychological & Behavioural Science, and the
study concluded that anthropomorphized food (i.e. pictures that
depicted happy and sad food) had significant impacts on behavior
leading to reduced levels of food waste.
The project has been successful, with
interventions shown to reduce food waste by as much as 35%, and
qualitative feedback from colleagues showing a shift in behavior
both at work and at home. While Winnow Sense has been installed in
all employee dining rooms across Melco’s integrated resorts in
Macau and Manila, Melco and Winnow are now in the process of
exploring applications in consumer-facing dining areas.
Ms. Denise Chen, Senior Sustainability
Adviser of Melco, said, “Given the global impact of waste
on the health of people, food security and the planet, we take food
waste very seriously. In 2020, we began our partnership with Winnow
AI technology to reduce food waste in the kitchens of our employee
dining rooms. We were excited by the opportunity to partner with
Winnow and LSE to trial awareness and communication campaigns to
encourage colleagues to change behavior in relation to plate waste.
We are pleased to be the first company to trial Winnow Sense and
will be using findings from the study to further communicate to our
colleagues to reduce plate waste on an ongoing basis.”
Mr. Marc Zornes, CEO and co-founder of
Winnow said, “We couldn’t be more proud of the team at
Melco who have already cut food waste significantly with Winnow but
wanted to go even further. This blueprint designed in collaboration
with world renowned experts from the London School of Economics
presents huge opportunities for operators everywhere to help their
diners make more sustainable food choices whilst maintaining high
levels of customer satisfaction.”
Melco, Winnow and LSE’s Plate Waste
Project
Food waste poses a challenge for businesses
across Macau. The issue is gaining traction amongst residents, with
over 80% respondents of a 2021 study considering the issue of food
waste in Macau to be serious. Whilst the complexity of the food
supply chain means multiple solutions are required to solve the
problem, it is commonly accepted that prevention of food waste is
the most desirable outcome. This formed the starting point for the
collaboration between Melco, Winnow and LSE.
In most commercial kitchens serving pre-prepared
foods, around 5-15% of all food purchased ends up being wasted
(source: Winnow). Around 30% of such food waste happens because
diners take too much and leave unwanted food on their plates
(source: Winnow). To test whether strategically placed
communications could help individuals make more sustainable
choices, a study was carried out at Melco’s employee dining
facilities in Macau at City of Dreams, Studio City and Altira Macau
resorts. The three properties combined serve over 11,000 employee
meals a day.
The interventions were measured using Winnow
Sense. Comprising a motion sensitive camera and digital scales, the
touchless system automatically captures an image and weight of any
food waste, and harvests data in the cloud to record waste levels
over the course of each service. Combining this data with the
number of covers served allows the team to create a metric for food
waste grams per cover, to then be used to chart progress throughout
the study.
Launched in January 2021, the team at LSE
selected one employee dining area as a control, and another two to
introduce communications in the form of posters placed at strategic
points around the dining area. All locations were equipped with
Winnow Sense units to measure plate waste. The system is designed
to be placed either in the front or back of house. In this study,
the systems were placed in the front of house allowing Melco team
members to quickly record their food waste using the touchless
system.
In parallel, Winnow ran periodic plate waste
audits at each site to analyze the components of plate waste and
the percentage of edible (e.g. meat, veg, fish, grains) vs
non-edible (bones, peels, non-food items) waste. Audits showed that
the percentage of edible food items was decreasing, providing
further evidence for behavioral change.
By May 2021, the results were in. Compared to
the trend seen at the Control Site, the site which received the
heaviest intervention saw a significant reduction in plate waste of
as much as 35% over the communications period, with effects
sustained even after the communications were removed. Notably, the
LSE team found that the site which received the posters with the
anthropomorphized food items had the greatest reduction, and that
staff from the same site also self-reported more efforts in
reducing food waste both at work and at home.
About Melco Resorts & Entertainment
Limited
The Company, with its American depositary shares
listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market (NASDAQ: MLCO), is a
developer, owner and operator of integrated resort facilities in
Asia and Europe. The Company currently operates Altira Macau
(www.altiramacau.com), an integrated resort located at Taipa, Macau
and City of Dreams (www.cityofdreamsmacau.com), an integrated
resort located in Cotai, Macau. Its business also includes the
Mocha Clubs (www.mochaclubs.com), which comprise the largest
non-casino based operations of electronic gaming machines in Macau.
The Company also majority owns and operates Studio City
(www.studiocity-macau.com), a cinematically-themed integrated
resort in Cotai, Macau. In the Philippines, a Philippine subsidiary
of the Company currently operates and manages City of Dreams Manila
(www.cityofdreamsmanila.com), an integrated resort in the
Entertainment City complex in Manila. In Europe, the Company is
currently developing City of Dreams Mediterranean
(www.cityofdreamsmed.com.cy) in the Republic of Cyprus, which is
expected to be the largest and premier integrated destination
resort in Europe. The Company is currently operating a temporary
casino, the first authorized casino in the Republic of Cyprus, and
is licensed to operate four satellite casinos (“Cyprus Casinos”).
Upon the opening of City of Dreams Mediterranean, the Company will
continue to operate the satellite casinos while operation of the
temporary casino will cease. For more information about the
Company, please visit www.melco-resorts.com.
The Company is strongly supported by its single
largest shareholder, Melco International Development Limited, a
company listed on the Main Board of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong
Limited and is substantially owned and led by Mr. Lawrence Ho, who
is the Chairman, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of
the Company.
About Winnow
Winnow develops cutting-edge digital tools to
help chefs run more profitable, sustainable kitchens. Launched in a
single staff restaurant in 2013, Winnow is trusted today by
thousands of chefs in over 40 countries, where kitchens’ food waste
is consistently cut in half. Together Winnow and its partners are
saving over 36 million meals a year from the bin: the equivalent of
$40 million in food cost savings for its clients. For more info:
www.winnowsolutions.com
For media enquiries, please
contact:Chimmy LeungExecutive Director, Corporate
Communications Tel: +852 3151 3765Email:
chimmyleung@melco-resorts.com
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