Cruise ships go through a lot of food in order to feed a small city worth of people each week, and this leaves the potential for massive quantities of food waste.
Every ship has multiple restaurants, from buffets to elegant sit down restaurants, and not all the food gets eaten. Once food is put out at a buffet or served, it can't go back into the kitchen, so it's either eaten or thrown away.
Food waste isn't just a cruise problem, it's something affecting every restaurant, bakery, supermarket, and theme park.
Thankfully, Royal Caribbean's commitment to responsible management of the food it sources and uses onboard has a built-in plan for minimizing the waste of perishables.
Over the last couple of years, the cruise line has embarked on a new mission of minimizing how much food ends up in the trash.
Royal Caribbean's commitment goes beyond the buffet
In 2021, Royal Caribbean set out to truly reduce food waste across all of its ships with a new program that went beyond just one restaurant.
The parent company, Royal Caribbean Group, set a goal of reducing food waste across the fleet by 50% by 2025. As of early 2024, Royal Caribbean says it's already reduced food waste by about 33% across its fleet, saving tens of millions of dollars a year and literally tons of food.
"Reducing food waste is the single easiest and most impactful thing every one of us can do make a positive impact to the planet," is what Linken D'Souza, Royal Caribbean Senior Vice President, Global Food & Beverage, said of this program that he calls "Win on Waste".
There are five main focuses on how they plan to achieve that, and all of them are already in place as they work towards reaching their initial goal:
- Developing a proprietary platform to monitor food supply and accurately estimate how much food should be produced, prepped and ordered on a given day.
- Using artificial intelligence (AI) to adjust food production in real time.
- Introducing a dedicated onboard food waste role to monitor and train crew members.
- Tracking guest demand for specific menu items and adjusting menu preparation and ordering accordingly.
- Introducing a food waste awareness campaign in the crew dining areas fleet wide.
Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) allows chefs to better estimate how much food should be produced, prepped, thawed, and ordered, on a given day, at any given time.
They do this by entering the demographics of passengers onboard, where the ship is sailing, and even the weather to come up with the right amount of food and type of cuisine that will fit passengers on that sailing.
Data dashboards are reviewed by ship and corporate leaders to inform adjustments and track initiative progress.
The purpose AI serves is to prevent generation of the food waste in the first place.
Some of the changes are less technical, but make logistical sense, such as food procurement.
A ship is supplied with all sorts of food, but it needs to be ready for every day of the sailing. Royal Caribbean orders bananas at various stags of ripeness and held separately to ensure perfectly ripe bananas are available throughout each sailing.
At the buffet, there's been changes to how much food is prepared and how it's served to guests.
While there's still the traditional trays of food, many hot items are prepared using small batches and "À la Minute" cooking methods. Plus, cooking or carving stations ensure proper portion sizes and preserve quality, while engaging guests.
You'll also see less perishable food displays and decorations at buffets.
When there is food waste, frequently wasted items are noted to inform future adjustments. Waste datasets are reviewed daily by ship Food & Beverage leaders.
Reducing food waste with AI technology on the biggest cruise ship in the world
Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas is the biggest cruise ship in the world, and can accommodate up to 10,000 people that all have to have thousands of meals prepared every day.
When Icon departs Miami, it has more than 130,000 pounds of food onboard so that all of the more than 40 restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues are fully stocked.
To not only ensure they have enough food but also make sure as little as possible is wasted, Royal Caribbean has equipped this ship with a new AI system.
The new AI system will be able to better predict exactly how much food, down to individual ingredients a vessel will need for a specific cruise.
By leveraging AI, Royal Caribbean can tell their chefs and crew onboard how much meat, vegetables, and other food they'll need to match the needs of passengers on that specific sailing.
When Icon of the Seas first started sailing, the AI system was able to ensure the ship was utilizing 86% of its food onboard.
A fun fact about the food waste on Icon of the Seas is that the ship's waterpark is actually partially powered by it.
The power for the water slides here is generated partly by food waste, trashed cardboard and bio waste. They get converted into pellets that, when heated, give off steam that generates power.
