$100M saved, one plate at a time: inside Winnow's global movement of chefs

In a hotel kitchen in Doha, a chef turns leftover breakfast hash browns into gnocchi. In Bangkok, overripe tomatoes and watermelon rind become a tasting dish. In corporate kitchens across the US, carrot peels and broccoli stems end up in fresh pasta.

Small decisions like these, made every day in thousands of kitchens, now add up to more than $100 million in food costs saved every year. That's the combined saving of hospitality businesses using Winnow. It was built by chefs. That's why we call our community a global movement of chefs.

The waste most kitchens can't see

Most commercial kitchens throw away 5-15% of the food they buy. Many don't know it. When we surveyed more than 140 operators across Europe and North Africa, 70% underestimated how much food they waste and 40% didn't measure it at all.

That gap is getting more expensive. Food prices could rise by up to 18% by the end of 2026. Food waste isn't just a cost of doing business. It's profit in the bin.

How Winnow works

Winnow shows kitchens exactly what they throw away, when and why. A camera and connected scale sit above the bin. When a chef throws food away, the system weighs it, photographs it and identifies it, using AI trained on more than 1 billion images of real food waste. With Throw & Go®, there are no buttons to press. The team simply throws and goes.

That data becomes daily insight: what's being overproduced, which dishes come back uneaten, which trimmings could become something new. Winnow Foresight then forecasts how much to produce, so you make the right amount and never run short at service. And our expert coaches work alongside your team so the results last.

The AI finds the waste. Chefs change the kitchen.

Kitchens that measure typically cut food waste by more than half, and Winnow customers save 2 to 10 times what they pay for the system, with a return on investment in 6-12 months.

Proven in 3,500+ kitchens

Today Winnow is used in more than 3,500 locations across over 100 countries, by operators including Hilton, Accor, Marriott, IKEA, Mandarin Oriental and Guckenheimer. Each year, these kitchens save 70 million meals and avoid 122,000 tonnes of CO₂e.

• Accor: more than 200 hotels use Winnow, together saving one meal every six seconds.
• Guckenheimer: a 64% reduction in food waste across its US sites since 2022.
• Mandarin Oriental: a 36% reduction in four pilot hotels in six months, now rolling out across its 40+ hotels.
• Hilton: a 26% cut in plate waste across 45 hotels in 14 countries during Green Ramadan 2025.

"This milestone is a tribute to the chefs who are making food waste reduction part of their daily craft," says Marc Zornes, CEO and co-founder of Winnow.