A highly recommended read this week is The Sustainable Restaurant Association’s “Hospitality Rising: Global Challenges, Local Solutions” report. The report discusses the latest trends shaping the foodservice sector and celebrates a wide variety of sustainability initiatives from hospitality operations of all shapes and sizes around the world—restaurants, hotels and much more.
For those of you not familiar with The Sustainable Restaurant Assn. (The SRA), its aim is to better define what sustainability means for a restaurant. Its Food Made Good Standard sets out what “good” looks like in hospitality, providing chefs and restaurateurs with the tools to improve what their business is doing, share their successes and inspire their customers by dishing up food that not only looks and tastes good, but does good, too.
In this first-of-its-kind report, The SRA brings its members’ stories together to show that real change is happening, in big ways and small, in hospitality businesses of all types across the globe.
The research combines in-depth semi structured interviews with operators, experts and sector leaders; extensive desk research; participation in industry events and forums; and contributions from opinion leaders across the sector.
Illustrating What’s Possible
By sharing “Hospitality Rising”, The SRA hopes to illustrate what’s possible, celebrate the hospitality businesses who are already doing great things and inspire others to take similar action.
Threading throughout the report’s three volumes of 150+ pages—Plate, People, and Planet—is a common theme: community, collaboration and knowledge-sharing at a local and regional level are the most successful strategies for building a stronger, more resilient sector.
Plate explores how operators can move from passive buyers to active system-shapers. People looks at the relevance of social sustainability for foodservice. Planet focuses on environmental impact.
Some Excerpts from Plate
Operators are anchoring menus in local farms, fisheries and underused ingredients to protect cultural identity, cut supply chain vulnerability and create a stronger sense of place.
Leaders are making plant-rich eating the abundant, delicious default.
While farm-to-table dining is not a new concept, more operators are realizing that anchoring menus directly in on site and local farms doesn’t just enable ultra-seasonal, near-zero-waste cooking — it also builds resilience by minimizing supply chain risks.
Policies like Denmark’s organic procurement mandate (60 percent organic in public kitchens) show how government leadership can normalize local and nature-positive sourcing. As public institutions buy more regenerative grains, pulses and seasonal vegetables, the supply chain strengthens, giving restaurants and caterers better access to quality, provenance-rich ingredients.
Scale can enable change when demand is coordinated. Accor previously faced supply gaps for liquid cage-free eggs in Thailand. Several hotels pooled demand, guaranteeing a baseline volume that enabled a supplier to invest, rather than waiting for the market to respond.
The Many Upsides to Plant-Based Dishes
Increasing the proportion of plant-based dishes on menus is one of the most powerful decisions a hospitality business can make, having a positive impact across multiple focus areas of the Food Made Good Framework. By making this one change, restaurants can reduce emissions, limit the environmental impact of their supply chains and support better public health — all while improving profit margins.
As a theme, Sourcing Seafood Sustainably aims to ensure that seafood is caught or farmed in a manner that protects marine and freshwater ecosystems and does not come from biologically unsustainable stocks, such as overfished or endangered species. There is an incredible variety of fish in the sea; by serving up less common species, restaurants can safeguard marine life while boosting kitchen creativity and helping customers to discover new flavors.
One in five fish globally may come from illegal, unreported or unregulated sources, with prawns among the highest risk species.
Some Excerpts from People
Our food spaces form an integral part of the social, cultural and economic fabric of communities across the globe and can play significant roles in the lives of both customers and staff, shaping how people eat, work and connect. Our industry employs nearly 10 percent of the global workforce and turns out billions of meals every single day.
Training in sustainability, nutrition and craft improves food quality, reduces waste and builds kitchen flexibility. Skill is not a luxury: it’s a cost-control and retention tool.
Treat Staff Fairly offers a vision for hospitality as a space where people can see themselves building long-term careers. Through celebrating the diversity of the sector, investing in equity in practice, nurturing personal development and career progression, creating safe and harassment-free work environments, providing good pay and attractive benefits, and supporting employees’ mental and physical health, businesses can improve recruitment, retention, team motivation and brand reputation.
Mental health support, financial guidance and secure contracts all make a significant difference to the day-to-day lives of team members.
Practical training in sourcing, ethics and environmental impact strengthens decision-making and reduces reputational risk. Creating a dedicated sustainability team who can drive and coordinate progress across all facets of sustainability can help too.
Some Excerpts from Planet
Fair pay, access to healthcare, predictable contracts and basic protections are what workers deserve in any sector. In hospitality, where job insecurity is common, providing this level of security also creates the conditions for trust, loyalty and strong performance. There is also a clear sustainability implication.
Better food and better jobs go together. Treating kitchen teams as skilled professionals—not cost centers—drives consistency, reduces waste and builds resilient businesses.
By offering community meals, donating surplus food and connecting with local community centers and schools, restaurants put down deep roots, helping to improve public health and strengthening social connection at a local level.
Investment in skills, fresh food preparation and quality ingredients also improves workforce outcomes. From institutional and healthcare foodservice networks to casual dining chains, operators have found that plant-forward and scratch-cooked menus can reduce costs and improve staff retention and satisfaction.
Measurement Paired with Training, Ownership & Incentives
The biggest gains come when measurement is paired with training, ownership and incentives. Surplus platforms are normalizing redistribution and turning waste into value.
Operators who take water seriously now are the ones improving resilience, lowering risk and strengthening long term supply security as water variability becomes a defining pressure for more regions across the globe.
Hyatt embeds basic requirements on energy, water conservation, waste management and sourcing into onboarding and brand standards so that new colleagues understand expectations from the start; these are then reinforced at respective touch points, depending on the colleague’s scope.
Avoiding the creation of waste wherever possible is always the most impactful strategy. Interviewees stressed that reducing material intensity, favoring systems of reuse and redesigning operations around circular principles deliver far more consistent gains than relying on recycling, especially where infrastructure is weak.
Hospitality has a particularly urgent responsibility to eliminate food waste. According to the UNEP’s latest Food Waste Index Report, a total of 1.05 billion tons of food was wasted globally in 2022—and foodservice was responsible for 290 million tons of that. When food goes to waste, so does all the water and energy that’s gone into growing, producing and transporting that food.
Require waste partners to demonstrate where materials go, how they are handled downstream and whether they genuinely stay within the circular economy.
‘Impact in Action’ Sections
In each chapter, dedicated ‘Impact in Action’ sections highlight smart, effective real-life initiatives from businesses across the world. Some of these practices are increasingly common across the sector and swiftly becoming a new “normal”. Others are at the very forefront of innovation, offering an exciting new vision of what best practice can look like for hospitality.
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