International Chefs Day turns attention to where food comes from

International Chefs Day is held on 20 October each year and honours the culinary profession and its role in supporting the next generation of cooks. It was created in 2004 by the late Dr Bill Gallagher. This year Worldchefs and Nestlé Professional are bringing back the Food Explorers campaign, which puts a deeper focus on ingredients, including where they come from and how they are grown or harvested.

The campaign is aimed at young cooks and communities, not at architects or developers. Yet the themes it names (traceability, seasonality, nutrition and environmental responsibility) are questions that hotel owners and property developers meet whenever they plan a kitchen, a restaurant or a food hall.

Sourcing close to the kitchen changes what a site needs

Some hotels now grow a large share of their food on the property or integrate an agricultural footprint directly into their master plans. Across IHG’s Six Senses brand, on-site organic gardens, mushroom huts and composting facilities are structured into property master plans, frequently producing thousands of kilograms of produce monthly and supplying significant portions of restaurant needs. In Brazil, operators like Almenat Embu das Artes report that half of their culinary ingredients are sourced within 15 kilometres of the property.

Projects like these raise practical questions at the planning stage. An on-site farm or garden requires dedicated land or roof capacity, specialised composting infrastructure and allocated staffing. In urban settings, such as at luxury properties in London and New York, hotel teams allocate dedicated rooftop space for seasonal crops. A hotel’s food offering depends on site engineering and spatial allocation just as much as on the menu.

Energy and waste are being designed in from the start

Kitchens consume substantial energy. Published estimates put commercial kitchen energy intensity at between two and a half times and five to seven times the energy use per unit of floor area of standard commercial space. The range reflects differing study parameters, comparing kitchens inside larger buildings against standalone food service structures.

Some new developments are removing gas from the kitchen entirely at the design stage. Hotel Marcel in New Haven, a conversion of a 50-year-old office building, operates with zero gas lines, running its restaurant kitchen on electricity supported by 1,100 on-site solar panels. Its modern heating and cooling plant occupies a quarter of a floor previously dedicated to legacy mechanical equipment. The Radisson hotel in Manchester City Centre, refurbished from a Park Inn, pairs an induction kitchen with heat pumps for domestic hot water, eliminating fossil fuel use. Sugar House Hotel in Vermont, a 115-room Marriott Tribute Portfolio property featuring a rooftop restaurant, was designed all-electric from the ground up. These choices are made when the building is drawn, not when the menu is written.

Waste is the other half of the equation. The UN Environment Programme estimated that 1.05 billion tonnes of food were wasted worldwide in 2022, with the food service sector responsible for 290 million tonnes. UNEP experts also estimate that food loss and waste generate up to 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

To mitigate this, global hotel chains are deploying artificial intelligence measurement tools from companies like Winnow across regional portfolios, achieving reductions of 50 to 60 per cent in kitchen waste. Furthermore, a benchmark study by WRAP and the World Resources Institute for the Champions 12.3 coalition examined 42 hotel sites across 15 countries. Within a year, kitchen food waste at the sites fell by 21 per cent on average, and hotels saved $7 on average for every $1 invested. More than 70 per cent recovered their investment within a year, and 95 per cent within two years.

The open kitchen has become part of the guest experience

Architects at the firm Dyer Brown describe the open kitchen as increasingly a hallmark of modern restaurant design. They note that open kitchens raise critical questions regarding acoustics and ventilation, requiring architects to carefully position the kitchen to manage noise and airflow.

In a hotel or mixed-use scheme, where restaurants share structural space with guest rooms, offices or residences, decisions about kitchen location and ducting extend far beyond the dining room. The open kitchen represents the point where guest experience (visible culinary craft and ambience) meets building systems, structural columns, fans and floor plans.

Food growing has reached rooftops and retail

Rooftop agriculture now appears in luxury hotels, resort properties and retail centres. In Singapore, Fairmont Singapore and Swissôtel The Stamford operate a 450-square-metre rooftop aquaponics farm positioned between the two hotel towers, designed to meet a significant portion of their fresh vegetable and fish needs. In Hong Kong, urban farming firm Rooftop Republic constructed a 13,000-square-foot (1,200-square-metre) farm atop the Metroplaza shopping mall, where selected mall dining outlets directly utilise the harvest.

From a real estate perspective, market analysis from Multi-Housing News highlights that food-anchored concepts, such as rooftop farms, food halls and agrihood models, add tangible value to residential and mixed-use assets. While the financial case for on-site growing relies on operator metrics, the business case for waste reduction and energy optimisation remains exceptionally strong.

Kitchen decisions belong in the first plan

Food Explorers is a campaign about teaching ingredient origin, and it does not set architectural building standards. Even so, its core questions about where food originates and its environmental footprint apply directly to commercial real estate. The evidence is firmest for food waste, where multi-country data demonstrates fast financial returns, and for energy, where research confirms kitchens use far more energy per square unit than surrounding commercial space. Where a kitchen sits, how it is powered and how it handles waste are settled early in development, which is why culinary operations belong in the very first master plan.