From waste to wisdom: LSG Group's waste analysis
This is a special feature from PAX International's 2022 IFSA EXPO Long Beach edition, on page 18.
Photography teamed with artificial intelligence could one day unlock new information on food consumption onboard
Airlines and caterers have been examining food trolleys for years, looking for clues to save weight and cut back on wasted food.
Now, LSG Group has taken a new approach with a set of tools that take digital photos of returning trolleys and analyze the uneaten meal items with the help of AI. The industry got one of the initial looks at the practice at the LSG Group stand in Hamburg this past June, and several airline customers have signed up since to trial the new tool.
Perhaps there will be a time in the not-too-distant future that Robin Sippel, Head of Digital Agenda, and his team at LSG Group, will be able to solve mysteries like a consistently uneaten serving of chocolate mousse.
That and other mysteries may be solved only after time and gathering more data. And so far, LSG Group has been photographing uneaten airline food with an eye on spotting trends that can one day be used to solve problems.
Several pilots with airlines were run and have proven that the approach works. "We can say that we are now market-ready with the solution. Of course we will constantly enhance it to get more and more insights over time,” states Sippel.
With the help of artificial intelligence, LSG Group is seeking to learn what passengers like and don’t like about the food offered on board. The company has long pursued the goal of learning more, but the additional activity is now taking place with a goal of customizing recommendations for improvement.
For now, the LSG Group is calling the process Consumption Analytics. It has been developed by the company’s recently extended Digital Agenda department with a mission to “use new technology to solve problems that have not been solved in the old-fashioned ways,” says Sippel.
The Consumption Analytics program began simply in 2019 with interns working in the Digital Agenda department, taking pictures of returning meal trays with a mobile phone. After some initial testing and development, Sippel says the group recognized early on that there was value in the process. The following year, the company invested in its first proprietary camera system and put it to work in the LSG Sky Chefs kitchens for further testing. The system has been developed using a stationary camera that can photograph incoming tray sets at a rate of about one every three seconds and can be easily moved from place to place.
The pictures are sent to the LSG Group’s Data Platform, where artificial intelligence (AI) is trained to identify the individual meals of every airline and flight. The technology is able to read out of the image what has been fully eaten, partially eaten and what has been left untouched – without further human input and even if a tray is jumbled. With additional, detailed data about meals, weight, flights and passengers, the insights can be significantly enhanced. So far, the company has taken more than one million pictures of food returning to the caterers.
Robin Sippel, left, and Khanh Dinh of LSG Group’s Digital Agenda department with the Consumption Analytics tools at this year’s WTCE in Hamburg
LSG Group has worked with three airline customers so far. In one test, the airline identified a consistently uneaten tomato that caused meal planners to make a change in the menu preparation.
While it may be understandable that a less-than-fresh-looking tomato slice may go uneaten, a consistently untouched serving of chocolate mousse which analysis found on one flight was more baffling. After noting the consistently returned dessert item and discussing it with the airline and catering chefs, Sippel said there still was no clear explanation.
But whether it is tomatoes or chocolate mousse, learning more about the mountain of food that is wasted is a worthy task, especially when airlines are facing increased scrutiny in their onboard products from a public concerned about sustainability. At the same time, the new data insights can lead to a more customized, passenger-centric food offering – and hence to a greater Net Promoter Score (NPS).
“We are in the kitchen and we see the waste that is disposed,” says Sippel. “And if you see it, It is kind of heartbreaking that that much food is actually wasted.”
To get a better handle on the issue, Sippel says much more needs to be done beyond occasional spot checks on an irregular basis. A way of monitoring the returned trolleys needs to be efficient and able to detect food quality issues and consumption trends. Cutting back on food waste is, in itself a worthy venture. But learning what does not get consumed can lead airlines to make more practical decisions that could bring about weight savings and more satisfied passengers. Sippel’s team has calculated at anywhere between 40 and 300 kilograms per aircraft could be trimmed with an effective analysis.
One of the partial solutions is taking place through regulations that require airlines to use fewer disposable products onboard. Meals coming back in rotable tableware can be more thoroughly analyzed and often requires moving just a few obstructions to get a clear picture.
“Everything that is thrown away on the plane, right in the bin (on the aircraft), that is information, basically,” Sippel adds. “And the more we get back in the trolley and not in a bin, the more we can analyze, and the better we can customize food concepts in the future.”
