OPINION: Carlos Martin-Rios is associate professor of management at EHL Hospitality Business School in Switzerland. His research focuses on sustainability innovation, circular economy practices, and regenerative transitions in hospitality and foodservice. Here he delves into how menus across the hospitality sector have changed from viewing luxury as far-reaching exotic ingredients to thoughtful sustainable local produce and why hotels are adopting this circular recalibration of “gastronomy’s moral economy”.
“For much of its history, luxury dining mirrored the so-called gastronomic paradigm dominant in French haute cuisine: abundance as art, perfection as excess. The length of the menu, the rarity of the ingredients, and the cost of the spectacle defined prestige. Mastery meant commanding distance – ingredients flown across continents, labor hidden behind ritual, value measured by scarcity.
The aspiration is not to display wealth but to express care – care for materials, for people, for place.
That paradigm is now under revision. Luxury dining is starting to shift toward sustainability, as a growing number of leading kitchens replace opulence with responsibility and redefine excellence around meaning rather than magnitude. What once signified luxury, such as exotic produce, imported flavors, and ornate technique, is giving way to a new grammar of taste: seasonality, provenance, resource intelligence, and cultural humility. The aspiration is not to display wealth but to express care – care for materials, for people, for place.
As a researcher of sustainability innovation in hospitality, I see in this movement a profound recalibration of gastronomy’s moral economy. Methods born in fine dining are being redeployed to serve a different purpose: regeneration rather than display. By adopting circular economy principles, circularity is no longer an abstract ideal; it functions as a practical operating system. Design out waste at its source, keep resources circulating within the kitchen, and rebuild the ecological and human capacities that make gastronomy possible. The opportunity is tangible: resilient margins, credible storytelling, and a culinary craft where stewardship is not ornament but the new measure of skill.
Circular Innovation in Practice
Across leading kitchens, I observe a convergent playbook. Sourcing is treated as system design rather than procurement. Menus are tightened so core products reappear in multiple guises across courses and service periods. Growers and fishers are involved before planting and landing; varieties are chosen for flavor and resilience; calibers and yields are matched to realistic usage; by-products are reserved in advance for known preparations. “Local” becomes a planning conversation, not a marketing claim. The result is a supply relationship that stabilises price volatility and improves sensory quality because ingredients arrive with purpose built in.
Guests notice intention rather than austerity
Inside the kitchen, whole-ingredient cuisine is engineered at the prep table. Offcuts, peels, bones, whey, lees, crumbs, grounds – all the materials that usually leave in bins – are routed toward stocks, garums, misos, oils, crisps, sauces, staff meal, and drinks. The difference between rhetoric and results is cadence. Teams that publish by-product availability each week, test micro-recipes at staff meal, and fold successful outcomes into master prep sheets convert “waste reduction” into routine production. Once those patterns are codified, new staff learn them as technique. Costs settle. These sustainable changes do not compromise quality or experience — quality holds or improves. Guests notice intention rather than austerity.
Energy and water move from background utilities to culinary constraints. High-performing kitchens map energy intensity by station and reorganize sequences accordingly: overnight cooks when tariffs drop; pressure extraction to shorten stock times; ambient or controlled fermentations that replace energy-hungry processes; dish areas fitted with metered cycles and pre-rinse valves; heat capture where feasible. None of this weakens flavor. Often it heightens it, because processes become crisper and more predictable.
Circularity also has a social dimension. Kitchens that invest in apprenticeships focused on whole-animal and whole-plant preparation, rotate roles to spread by-product ideas, and partner with training programs outside their walls expand the talent pipeline and professionalize sustainability practice. Resourcefulness becomes a source of pride. Service culture reflects that pride; guests recognise it instinctively.
The common denominator across these shifts is process control. Feedback loops are short. Standards are written down. Iteration is constant. Sustainability improves at the same pace that consistency improves, because they are managed with the same tools.
Redefining Excellence Through Responsibility
In our research at EHL, we study how fine dining innovates when pressure is high and capital is limited. One lesson repeats: sustainability endures when it is treated as identity work. It must define what “good” looks like in the organization, not sit beside it as a project.
Food waste is an instructive case. Many operations start with bins and donations. Helpful, but shallow if nothing else changes. Waste falls and stays low only when it is absorbed into a broader circular strategy that touches purchasing, menu architecture, prep, energy, water, and learning.
That strategy begins upstream. Forecasts align with farm capacity. Contracts accept size variability and reward practices that improve flavor and shelf life. Deliveries are scheduled around processing windows, not just convenience. These steps lower losses before the product crosses the kitchen threshold.
Menu architecture does the next layer of work. Fewer SKUs, season windows that are sharper rather than vague, and components designed to reappear across formats allow surplus to be re-routed without improvisation at the pass. The aim is not severity; it is coherence. When the same element can land as a garnish today and a base tomorrow without betraying the restaurant’s voice, the system gains options and loses chaos.
Prep standards carry the load day to day. Leaf-to-root and nose-to-tail mappings are written for the ingredients that matter most. Target yields for by-products are posted like any other yield. Surplus flows into named “rotation recipes” that have a place on the board, not into ad hoc corners of the walk-in. Staff meal becomes the pilot plant: a safe space for daily tests that, when they work, graduate to the guest menu. This is how learning compounds.
On the utilities side, kitchens that revisit heat and water as design constraints unlock further savings. Build menus that can be executed with limited simultaneous heat sources. Sequence batches to smooth kilowatt peaks. Fit valves and meters so teams can see what the eye misses. None of this requires new ideology; it requires operational curiosity and the willingness to let resource facts shape technique.
Culture ties these elements together. Recognition should follow the same path as any other performance signal. If a line cook’s idea turns onion skins into a shelf-stable powder that replaces a purchased item, that idea deserves airtime at lineup and a clear place in the SOP. When thrifty solutions are celebrated as craft, the narrative changes. Sustainability stops sounding like compliance and starts reading like skill.
If hospitality prides itself on care, that care must encompass the systems that feed it.
Why the urgency? Because the economics of hospitality are tightening while expectations rise. Volatile inputs, stricter reporting, guests who can tell the difference between claims and practice — these forces are converging. Circularity turns those pressures into design prompts rather than threats. It translates quickly into fewer emergency orders, steadier vendor relations, calmer service, and fewer reputational risks because what is said matches what is done. Embracing sustainability can strengthen brand value and open a path to growth that does not rely on volume. Purposeful constraints are a powerful creative brief; they can refresh a culinary voice without adding complexity, attract a new generation of eco-conscious diners, and set businesses apart in a competitive market.
There is also a moral dimension we should not avoid. Gastronomy depends on soils, waters, fisheries, and skilled hands. If hospitality prides itself on care, that care must encompass the systems that feed it. Responsibility does not diminish luxury; it deepens it. A menu built on respect for materials, time, and labor carries a clarity that diners feel. The experience becomes lighter and more focused. Attention goes to flavour, story, and welcome things that last.
Awards and labels can help signal intent, but they should follow practice, not lead it. The strongest reputations are built in quiet ways that any auditor – or any commis – can understand. A tighter prep list. A cooler bin that is no longer full. A P&L line that stops jumping. A team that can explain why the menu reads the way it does. These are durable signals.
The opportunity is straightforward. Hotels and restaurants already possess the disciplines needed to operationalise circularity: repetition, documentation, mentorship, a daily cadence of review. Redirect those strengths toward material flows and utilities, and the gains arrive quickly. The urgency is equally clear. Energy costs, climate shocks, and regulatory scrutiny will not ease. Waiting turns manageable adjustments into reactive measures.
This is about redefining luxury. If fine dining, a setting long associated with excess, can treat intention as the highest form of refinement, the rest of hospitality can move with confidence. Doing better with less becomes the new standard of excellence in this way. The work is specific and measurable, and it improves the guest experience rather than constraining it. That is the path forward I see in the data and in the kitchens that reflect it: elegant operations, credible claims, and teams proud of the craft that makes both possible.”
The views expressed in this opinion piece are based on the observations, experience and belief of the individual author and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Sustainable Hotel News.
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