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In this week’s AST Briefing, we spotlight the key takeaways from our recent webinar, “Breaking the Chain to Save It: How Asia’s Hospitality Can Fix Food Systems.” From introducing a seasonable menu to deepening local farm partnerships, find out how hospitality’s innovators are turning responsible food sourcing into both a business competitive advantage and a cultural shift.

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Breaking the Chain to Save It: How Asia’s Hospitality Can Fix Food System

Asia’s hospitality industry is in culinary reckoning. Climate change threatens staple crops, global supply chains remain unstable and expensive, and rising guest expectations are adding pressure. These combined challenges demand urgent solutions.

In a nutshell, the way Asia eats and how hotels and restaurants serve food must change.

At the recent AST webinar, Breaking the Chain to Save It: How Asia’s Hospitality Can Fix Food Systems, three leaders showed what change looks like on the ground:

• Peggy Chan, Executive Director, Zero Foodprint Asia (ZFPA)

• Andrew Dixon, Founder & CEO, Nikoi and Cempedak Islands

• Bjorn Low, Co-founder & Chief Urban Farmer, Edible Garden City 

Their message was clear. To help create more sustainable food systems, the hospitality industry must address both ends of the chain: upstream and downstream.

Upstream focuses on food production: what we grow and how we grow it. Downstream is about processing and consumption: how food is transported, packaged, and served, and managed to minimize waste. Both ends must work together, driven by collaboration, data-backed metrics, and guest experiences that build trust and transparency.

Three Field-Tested Shifts You Can Implement Today

1. Replace “more” with “better” choices to spotlight local produce and avoid waste.

What we heard: Andrew and his team adopted fixed or smaller menus, which lowered over-ordering, simplified preparation, and let the kitchen highlight local, seasonal produce. Guests eventually embraced the shift. They trusted the kitchen and enjoyed being “relieved” from scanning long menus. It is proof that better choices, not more choices, can reduce waste without diminishing the dining experience.

Why it works: In hospitality, waste is often a design failure disguised as abundance. By replacing excess variety with focused, seasonal options, hotels can reduce spoilage, elevate the quality of ingredients, and celebrate local surpluses (e.g., turning peak-season mulberries into jam or ice cream).

Team play: Front-of-house staff need simple scripts to explain the “why” behind shorter menus. Marketing reframes “limited choice” as a chef-led tasting journey that spotlights regional ingredients. Finance tracks the gains by linking lower waste to real cost improvements. As our recent “Sustainability Beyond the Manager: Engaging Your Entire Team” webinar shows, transformation lasts only when every department plays its part.

Consider these actions today.

• Retire your buffet, or set a firm timeline and plan to do so.

• Pilot a two or three-course set menu at lunch for 60 days, measure prep waste and plate returns weekly, and scale what works.Train guest-facing teams with an effective narrative: “We design menus around the best of this week’s harvest. You’ll eat fresher, waste less, and discover the stories behind your food.”

2. Make food producers - farmers and fishermen – part of your brand, without greenwashing.

What we heard: Andrew and his team acquired a 7-hectare permaculture farm that now supplies eggs, chicken, fruit, and vegetables; they feed chickens with black soldier fly larvae grown from kitchen scraps to close loops. Costs are higher than buying conventionally, but quality is unmistakably better, and guest loyalty is rising. On the property, small kitchen gardens and chicken coops deepen the connection (kids love collecting eggs). At the same time, a new boat-to-table experience brings guests face-to-face with the fishermen who supply the catch and the chef who turns it into the day’s meal.

Why it works: Beyond provenance, guests want connections and stories. When they meet farmers or fishers, the story becomes tactile and memorable. That builds pricing power and loyalty even when profit margins on the ingredients are thinner.

The guardrail: As Bjorn emphasized, don’t overclaim. A hotel farm alone will likely not be enough to feed the entire property. It is best positioned as guest engagement and skills hubs, not food supply or carbon panaceas.

Consider these actions today.

• If you have land within 10–30 km: scope a micro-supply farm in partnership with a local grower; start with one product you can repeatedly feature (e.g., eggs).

• If you’re an urban hotel, convert an ornamental space into a productive edible landscape with native plants (e.g., winged beans, moringa, edible flowers), and tie it to hands-on guest activities (garden-to-bar, harvest-to-plate classes).

• Build a farmer-meet-the-guest moment: a brief pre-dinner “provenance chat” or a short farm reel on your QR menu.

3. Allocate more money upstream: ZFPA’s 1% pledge funds soil health improvement. 

What we heard: Zero Foodprint Asia channels the 1% added to diners’ bills from participating restaurants/hotels into a grant pool that supports farmers in transitioning to regenerative practices. Since 2021, ZFPA has onboarded over 100 partners and granted HKD 5.8 million (or USD 754,000) across 26 farming projects, with an additional 10 projects this year. 

Early results from the Astungkara Way project after four crop cycles are striking:

• Input costs down by 39% (less chemical fertilizer)

• Labor costs decreased by 12% (ducks used for weeding and pest control)

• Net farm profit increased by 31%

• Yield stability maintained (seed/yield change minimal but trending positive)

At the portfolio level, ZFPA continues to fund hundreds of farmers to transform and restore thousands of acres of degraded land not by philanthropy, but through many small transactions done transparently at the point of dining.

Why it works: Hotels often shoulder the optics of sustainability while farmers carry the risk. A dedicated, auditable funding loop aligns stories, science, and systems: guests co-invest, farmers transition, operators gain differentiated provenance, and everyone gets healthier soils.

Consider these actions today:

• If you’re a ZFPA’s 1% pledge partner, use a plain-language explainer. For example, “this partnership helps farmers adopt regenerative practices, and results are audited and reported annually.”

• Earmark part of your events/catering revenue to match guest contributions

• Insist on monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV): soil carbon sequestration, biodiversity indicators, pesticide reduction, and farmer profit shifts.

Urban Farming, Reframed

Bjorn’s team has installed food production across Singapore’s built environment for 13 years, from the Parkroyal Collection properties to a community farm 10 minutes from Orchard Road that supplies over 80 restaurants weekly with high-value items such as microgreens and edible flowers. 

The candid truth: urban farms won’t solve food poverty, but they can:

• De-risk supply for niche, high-value items that chefs struggle to source consistently.

• Educate and delight guests with harvest-to-plate activities.

• Rewild landscapes via food forests and syntropic plantings that restore pollinators and soil life.

• Close loops by taking digestate and compost back into the soil.

Takeaway: Urban rooftop farms cannot replace rural fields, but they serve as valuable spaces for engagement, ecology, and innovation. They inspire chefs, educate guests, and create deeper connections to food systems.

A Brief 4-Step Action Plan for Hotels and F&B Companies

If your independent hotel is planning to join a loyalty platform such as GHA Discovery, Journey, or SLH Club, we recommend these 9 steps to support a smooth integration and help your property maximize the benefits of the partnership.

→ Go deeper into the 4-step action plan here.

Become an AST Member Today

Since 2023, your support has powered Asia Sustainable Travel’s solution-driven stories. For that, we thank you.

Now, we are stepping forward into our next chapter.

We’re excited to introduce AST Membership — designed to equip hoteliers, marketers, and tourism professionals with the insights, tools, and connections to lead the sustainability agenda instead of following it.

Why join?

• AST Briefing: Weekly curated updates on sustainable travel trends

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• Evokit: A resource hub of ready-to-use templates & guides

• AST Webinars: Live conversations with subject-matter experts, hoteliers & changemakers

• AST Forums: Flagship events spotlighting overlooked tourism communities

• Sustainability Solution Providers Directory: Curated list of vetted sustainability solutions

• Monthly Market Brief: Stay ahead with exclusive insights, regulations & funding opportunities

• Strategic Member Connections: Personalized introductions to like-minded collaborators

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