2025 in focus: Sustainability as the foundation for modern contract catering

Contract catering today faces a key challenge: How to balance profitability and sustainability? How can you provide high quality catering while conserving resources? How can you eliminate food waste without increasing costs? Modern tools and digital processes provide the answers.

Accurate demand planning is the key to success

In contract catering, planning accuracy is the key to success or wastage. Traditional estimation methods quickly reach their limits – especially with fluctuating factors such as weather, seasonality, remote work, or vacation periods.

Digital ordering systems provide flexibility and control

The introduction of digital ordering solutions such as qnips takes contract catering a decisive step further towards sustainability. They allow guests to order their meals in advance and give businesses the control to precisely match production to actual demand. This reduces uncertainties. At the same time, kitchen operations become more efficient: Production becomes leaner, more predictable, and more resource-efficient-a win-win for the environment and the business.

Companies can also involve their guests directly in their sustainability strategy: Special icons on digital menus make it easy to identify sustainable or locally sourced dishes. Guests get transparent information at a glance and can make informed choices about more environmentally friendly dishes. This not only encourages sustainable choices, but also builds trust and increases guest satisfaction.

AI-powered forecasting tools & food waste monitoring

AI-powered forecasting tools, such as those from Delicious Data, bring tangible improvements to the planning and resource management of contract catering. They provide greater planning certainty by accurately incorporating external factors such as weather and seasonality into forecasts. As a result, actual demand is reliably predicted. The result is less overproduction and a significant reduction in food waste. At the same time, the intelligent systems enable significant cost savings, as optimized planning not only conserves resources, but also makes the use of goods and production processes more efficient.

Food waste monitoring systems make sustainability measurable and open up new opportunities for targeted waste reduction. Only what is visible can be improved. With real-time analytics, these systems show exactly where food waste is occurring and provide valuable insight into how to effectively prevent it. At the same time, they provide deep insight into production processes, enabling continuous optimization and adjustment. In this way, sustainability becomes an integral part of daily operations.

Why it is important to act now?

Every year, hundreds of tons of food go to waste - a burden not only on the environment, but also on corporate budgets. The solution is to use modern tools like those from Delicious Data GmbH and qnips GmbH to effectively address these issues. Intelligent planning and ordering processes reduce overproduction by up to 30%. Accurate forecasting minimizes uncertainty and enables up to 40% more accurate planning. As a result, the industry has already saved 2.5 million meals and is making a measurable contribution to a more sustainable future.

Digitalization offers tremendous potential to make contract catering more sustainable. With innovative solutions, you can create transparency, increase efficiency and reduce waste - a win-win for your business, your guests and the environment.

Now is the time to take responsibility and lead the way to a more resource-efficient future.

Let's get in touch!

www.qnips.io