Fans at London Stadium, where Delaware North has operated food, beverage and special event services since 2015, can enjoy great coffee and fresh pastries at the West Ham United Coffee Co. Café. It’s also a popular hangout spot for stadium employees and the hundreds of guests arriving for stadium tours.
However, with a fluctuation of guests (especially during non-event days), the London Stadium team felt they needed to find a better way to reduce waste from surplus food. Alex Movila, café manager, was one of the people involved in finding a solution – the Too Good To Go app.
“I didn’t like having a lot of waste, especially when the cost of living is so high,” Movila said. “The app helps connect local people with unused food and reduces our waste.”
Too Good To Go was founded in 2015 to combat the 2.8 billion tons of food around the world that is wasted every year. Restaurants and food outlets create to-go bags of remaining food items at the end of the day, which customers can purchase at a discounted price via the app.
Since partnering with Too Good To Go, food waste at the West Ham Coffee Co. Café has been reduced by 70%. The café sells bags of surplus food that are filled with pastries, sandwiches and cakes on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
“Considering the sharp fluctuations of guests at the stadium on match days versus non[1]match days, this has been an exceptional solution to leveling resources,” said Chelsea O’Brien, head of hospitality for Delaware North at London Stadium, who championed the effort.
“I am really happy with our work with Too Good To Go,” O’Brien continued. “It is one of the first initiatives I was involved in with my GreenPath role and has been a huge success.”
Additional new sustainability initiatives at London Stadium include:
- Going paperless at restaurants, using tablet technology for menus and ordering.
- Partnering with recycling company Bywaters to turn unused coffee grounds into coffee logs, which are used as sustainable biofuel logs for home-use wood burners.
- Debuting new uniforms for team members made from fully recycled materials