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1. Introduction
The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAOs) has declared food waste as a critical world problem that has significant environmental, economic and societal impact. The severity of this perennial problem has seen food waste been identified as one of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (FAO, 2020a; Iazzi et al., 2021). Under SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production), indicator 12.3 aims to reduce global food waste by 50% across retail and consumer levels (FAO, 2020b). This global problem has been widely acknowledged in today's food sustainability climate affecting local councils and international governments. The magnitude of this food waste issue is worth over $1 trillion with an annual encumbrance of 1.3 billion tonnes globally (Evans, 2020).
Unfortunately, hospitality companies are in the eye of this food waste storm across various countries. For example, restaurants in Turkey contribute approximately of 3,782 kg of food waste per year, which is the second highest amount within Organisation of Islamic Cooperation countries (Coskun and Ozbuk, 2020). In Sri Lanka, food waste constitutes about 79% of total waste in hotels (International Financial Corporation, 2013). This figure is slightly lower in Denmark with 50% of food waste generated in the hospitality industry (Curry, 2012), and restaurants in Italy contributing to approximately 21% of total food waste (Coldiretti, 2017). In China, the food service sector is responsible for approximately half of the food waste in the whole food supply chain (Filimonau et al., 2020a).
It is important to note that food service is a common product and service offering in the hospitality industry, food and beverage (F&B) establishments deal with multiple touchpoints of food from purchasing, storing, preparation, cooking and serving that involve various departments. Hence, there are more opportunities for food waste to occur at various stages such as chefs’ over-prepping (Bharucha, 2018) to anticipate any additional walk-ins, and waiting staff allowing customers to over-order (Filimonau et al., 2020a). Furthermore, the different types of service design offering can also influence the level of food waste such as all you can eat buffets that contribute to most plate waste (Juvan et al., 2017). Therefore, gaining a more in-depth understanding of food waste behaviour amongst hospitality employees can...