The Impact of the Climate Crisis on Your Hospitality Business: Why Carbon Accounting & Climate Action Matters Today
Guest blog by Net Zero Now
The climate crisis is no longer a distant threat but is already having a very real impact on the hospitality industry. That impact is both direct, resulting in increased costs as supply chains are put under increasing pressure and the cost of energy increases, and indirect, driving new attitudes and expectations of customers, employees, and investors.
But with these challenges come opportunities – to improve your bottom line, to establish yourself as a leader in an increasingly eco-conscious market and to increase the value of your business.
Understanding the Impact of Climate Change on Hospitality
The hospitality industry is uniquely vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Rising temperatures, extreme weather events, and shifts in global ecosystems directly affect the supply chains that businesses rely on, resulting in higher costs and lower / less reliable availability.. Energy prices are also likely to soar as demand for cooling increases and fossil fuel resources become scarcer.
Indirectly, the climate crisis is changing the attitudes of the people who make your business thrive – your customers, your employees and your investors.
- Consumers are increasingly seeking out businesses that align with their values, particularly when it comes to sustainability – 69% of consumers worldwide have changed the products and services they use due to concern about climate change and 64% of British consumers willing to pay up to 10% more for sustainable foods and drinks (YouGov, 2024).
- Employees, especially younger generations, prefer to work for companies that take meaningful action on climate issues – 60% of Britons agree that climate change is the biggest threat to civilisation, with this sentiment being particularly strong among Gen Z (70%) and Millennials (63%) (YouGov, 2024).
- Investors are placing greater emphasis on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria, meaning businesses that credibly address their environmental impact will have access to more funding and will receive a premium valuation of their business (IMD, 2023).
Businesses also face increased regulatory pressure. In the UK, larger businesses (£36m+ t’over) are already required to report Scope 1 and 2 emissions under the Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) regulations. These requirements are expected to expand in the near future, reducing the threshold to include more businesses and increasing the reporting requirements to include Scope 3 emissions (the emissions from your supply chain, including all the food and drink you buy throughout the year). This is particularly relevant to the hospitality sector which contributes up to 15% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions (Net Zero Now, 2024, and where Scope 3 emissions account for c.70-95% of emissions, the vast majority of which comes from the food served (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Emissions Sources from different types of hospitality business
Source: Net Zero Now Customer analysis; Cool Food 2022
The Challenge and Opportunity of Tackling Scope 3 Emissions
As Figure 1 also shows, as an industry, we have a long way to go to meet the 2030 targets for carbon emissions per meal. Getting anywhere near these targets will take more than removing plastic straws and adding a few LED lightbulbs, hospitality businesses need to understand their full carbon footprint, including Scope 3 emissions, and find ways to minimise their climate impact.
I know what you’re thinking – “it’s too expensive”, “it’s too complicated”, “we’re too busy” – and until recently, you might have been right. But…
- It’s cost effective: Quite apart from being the right thing to do for your planet, taking positive climate action is the right thing to do for your business. Access to the Net Zero Now Carbon Accounting and Climate Action platform is available from c.£100 per site per year, while the resulting reduction in energy and water use, food waste, staff attrition, etc can save the average site thousands (UK Hospitality estimate the average pub / restaurant could save up to 20% on energy bills through energy efficiency measures alone)
- It’s straightforward: The global guidelines on “carbon accounting” are undeniably complex, but thanks to Coca Cola, Pernod Ricard, Heineken UK, The Sustainable Restaurant Association and many others, business are now able to follow the Net Zero Hospitality Protocol – an industry standard methodology for measuring and reporting emissions that ensures consistency of measurement across the sector as well as clarity on what and how to measure your emissions
- It’s quick & easy: As a Zonal customer, this is where you have a huge advantage. Zonal’s new partnership with Net Zero Now allows you to measure the largest part of your carbon footprint – the food and drink you have bought throughout the year, without lifting a finger. By integrating Zonal technology with Net Zero Now’s carbon accounting platform, we can provide you with accurate, detailed and regular analysis of your carbon emissions through the Net Zero Now platform. Where the data is available, we can even provide this on a site by site basis with no additional work from you.
and , as if all of the above wasn’t enough
- It’s good for your business: The Net Zero Hospitality Protocol includes criteria for Certifying your business, first as “On The Road to Net Zero” and ultimately as a “Net Zero” business, giving you a clear and credible way to communicate to your customers, employees, investors and other stakeholders and access the commercial benefits of taking positive climate action.
Ready to turn the climate challenge into a business opportunity? Discover how Net Zero Now’s integration with Zonal can help you accurately measure, manage, and reduce your carbon footprint. Start your journey towards sustainability today—contact the Zonal team and see how we can support your business in leading the way to a net zero future.
Sources:
- British attitudes towards sustainability in 2024: Key insights from YouGov data
- Climate change: change to consumer behavior 2019 | Statista
- Sustainable carbon credits strategy for the hospitality industry | Deloitte UK
- From data to decarbonisation: A roadmap for hotels to reach net zero | SMS
- Urgent action needed for a Net Zero hospitality sector, says new report
- Top 5 Ways for Hospitality Businesses to Reduce Energy Usage – Unyfi
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Shorefield Holidays reduces inventory management costs and boosts guest experiences with connected tech from Zonal
Introducing Shorefield Holidays
Family-run business
Established 1958
Award-winning holiday park operator
Collection of 9 parks across Dorset & Hampshire
“While we were looking for a new technology solution, we were looking for something that would be more integrated across the board, a cost saving for us as a business, and be able to take us to the next step.”Ryan Swatridge, Group Entertainments Manager, Shorefield Holidays
The business challenge
With a drive to deliver unforgettable experiences for their guests, owners and residents; as well as to join up their technology across their parks to deliver better integration and facilitate cost savings, Shorefield Holidays began the search for a technology partner that could help take them to the next level.
They needed a technology partner that would help them grow and expand, as well as deliver live, day-to-day insight over areas such as stock levels to enable more effective decision-making, something they were lacking at the time. The Shorefield team also wanted to be able to better understand their guests, including spending patterns, so technology that provided easy-to-digest and detailed reporting on how guests were engaging with the business was vital.
The system needed to be hospitality-dedicated, and ultimately make life easier for their guests and staff.
“Technology is a huge part of our business, from the iServes to the app, the loyalty, we massively embraced what Zonal brought to us. We’re just looking at different ways we can bring technology to what we do, we even have robots in our restaurant that will serve you your dinner.”Ryan Swatridge, Group Entertainments Manager, Shorefield Holidays
The solution
With a set of requirements and criteria in mind, the Shorefield team began researching different technology suppliers, as well as what their competitors were doing, and as a result chose to work with Zonal to implement a suite of connected hospitality technology across their parks to meet their business’s objectives.
With Zonal’s industry-leading EPoS at the core of their restaurants, the Shorefield team have since benefitted from real-time, accurate stock monitoring via Zonal’s built-in stock management module, enabling them to reduce costs on external stock counts. Zonal’s handheld EPoS ordering solution for staff, iServe, was also implemented, enabling staff to take orders at the tableside and automatically sending these through for fulfilment helping to improve guest experiences through speedier service and eliminating any room for errors, whilst providing significant time savings for staff by removing the need for orders to be re-keyed.
Alongside Zonal’s EPoS, the Shorefield team also chose to implement our purchase-to-pay inventory management solution, Acquire. With an end-to-end purchasing platform in place, fully integrated with their EPoS, the team have transformed their inventory management, enabling them to manage all of their suppliers and purchasing in one central platform, as well as reducing staff overhead by eliminating the need for their team to spend hours logging delivery notes and invoices.
“The difference is night and day; the money it’s saving us in not running multiple different platforms, and time it’s saving the team, and the fact that it’s just modernised us as a business.”Chris Weymouth, Assistant Complex Manager – Oakdene Forest Park, Shorefield Holidays
To further enhance their guest experience, Shorefield implemented Zonal’s Order & Pay app across their estate of holiday parks. Zonal worked with both the Shorefield operations and marketing teams to develop their app into exactly what they wanted it to be, including delivery to location functionality to enable guests to place orders for delivery to their accommodation – providing guests with convenience and flexibility.
All the functionality is backed up by Zonal’s robust suite of reporting. With Zonal’s integrated tech in place, the Shorefield team are able to drill down into more detail than ever, including a granular view of GP margins for every recipe item, helping them to expose any inefficiencies or fluctuations, and react accordingly.
- Industry-leading EPoS for holiday parks, complete with a robust stock management solution and real-time data capture
- Handheld ordering devices for staff to speed up service times and reduce room for error
- A fully-integrated purchase-to-pay solution, enabling the Shorefield team to centralise purchasing and supplier management, reducing costs and saving staff time
- A branded, feature-rich customer app, fully-integrated with their EPoS, to give guests more control over their dining experience during their stay, complete with deliver to location functionality to enable delivery straight to their cabins
- Robust, detailed reporting across their entire technology ecosystem, providing the necessary insight to help the Shorefield team to make more effective decisions
“You can see on the sales and profitability reports the GP margins for every recipe item, which means you can really expose any small problems you’re having with the fluctuation of figures. It gives you the ability to push that GP as much as you can.”Chris Weymouth, Assistant Complex Manager – Oakdene Forest Park, Shorefield Holidays
Results
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Fixing people's hospitality bugbears
What are consumers' top frustrations in hospitality, and how can hospitality operators address them? Find out in this exclusive consumer research report in partnership with CGA by NIQ
Our previous GO Technology research revealed that hospitality still plays an important role in people’s social lives despite cost pressures, but with 49% of consumers saying they’d become less loyal to a brand after a few bad experiences, it’s incredibly important for hospitality businesses to deliver frictionless experiences that meet guests’ expectations, without any frustration during the journey.
This exclusive research of 5,000 hospitality consumers reveals the biggest frustrations guests encounter when engaging with venues, both in-venue and pre-visit, how these frustrations differ between demographics, and what actions they are likely to take following a frustrating experience.
What's in the report?
- Top 5 biggest bugbears
- Frustrations by stage in the customer journey
- How do these frustrations differ between demographics?
- Where and when consumers vent their frustrations about their hospitality experiences
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Making the business case to Finance for hospitality technology
Learn more about how specialist hospitality technology can benefit wider stakeholders in your business, such as finance
As an operator working day-in, day-out with your front- and back-of-house teams, you may already be acutely aware of the tangible benefits your technology can offer to your business. However, it can be difficult to “sell” those benefits across for stakeholders within the business that may not be direct users of the technology on a daily basis.
In this guide, we explore how hospitality technology can also meet the needs of your finance team, how the operational improvements it brings can have a positive impact on the wider business, as well as how it can help to deliver more accurate, data-driven insights that facilitate better decision-making to drive the business forward.
Download this guide to discover:
- The benefits of hospitality technology to your wider business
- What key areas will your Finance team consider when implementing new hospitality tech?
- How specialist hospitality technology can meet your head of Finance’s priorities
- How to address any concerns they may have around integration and implementation
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Guide: Transform your hotel's back-of-house operations with hospitality tech
Discover how a suite of connected hospitality technology can help build an efficient back-of-house operation in your hotel
With cutting costs and maximising margins front-of-mind for many hoteliers, ensuring you have the right technology in place to collect, capture and report on operational data from your bar & restaurant is integral to making better, more informed decisions.
Discover how specialist hospitality technology can transform your hotel’s back-of-house F&B operations, from automated and streamlined processes that result in frictionless experiences for guests, to real-time, reliable data collected at every touchpoint within the restaurant that increases reporting accuracy for stock management and business performance to help you cut costs and boost profits.
Download this guide to discover:
- The benefits of specialist hospitality technology in hotels
- How centralised product management improves control
- How stock & ordering technology can help you manage costs and reduce waste
- The role of accurate data in improving back-of-house operations
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See our connected technology in action
It can be hard to visualise all the different ways connected technology can improve both operations and guest experiences, so we thought we’d show you instead. Click below to explore our connected solutions through the eyes of your customers in our virtual pub, restaurant and hotel, and discover the benefits of integrated hospitality technology at every stage of the customer journey.
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Serving Success: 10 Ways to reduce admin time using Zonal technology
No one gets into the hospitality business to fill out spreadsheets, but admin is a vital part of running any successful business. And, with staff in short supply and rising costs making every minute more precious than ever, finding ways to reduce time spent on admin has even more benefits.
Zonal technology can help automate admin tasks, which increases overall efficiency, reduces human error, and saves operators, and their teams, valuable time – and here are 10 ways how…
1. Export sales and revenue figures from your EPoS directly into your accounting system
Manually inputting sales figures from an EPoS into a separate accounting system is a laborious task. With Zonal’s smart, integrated EPoS solution, you can import this data directly into your accounting software, eliminating the need for a staff member to manually complete this task. Not only does this save valuable hours that could be better spent elsewhere, but it reduces the risk of human error too.
2. Keep track of employee start/finish times
Zonal’s technology can remove the headache of keeping on top of employee start and finish times by tracking exactly when your staff clock in and out directly in the POS. This means no more managing multiple timesheets and reconciling against rotas. Plus, staff hours can be easily accessed from one central location for easy reporting.
3. Manage stock ordering from one central platform
Maintaining stock counts and ordering new stock is a major time commitment for operators. However, having a digital stock management system provides tighter controls, as the entire ordering process can be managed end-to-end from one system and real-time reports mean operators can react quickly to low or surplus stock levels. This eliminates time spent checking discrepancies between systems, speeds up the whole ordering process with managed supplier lists and order templates, and results in less wastage and less cash tied up in stock.
4. Gain access to a comprehensive reporting suite to monitor business performance and metrics
Analysing your business’s performance is vital to maintaining a successful operation but collecting and collating all that data can be time-consuming. Operators that have a fully integrated suite of tech with powerful analytics and a digestible reporting solution can go a long way to making business evaluation a much simpler task. Zonal’s technology has the ability to generate reports on different areas of the business and automatically send these out to key members of staff. Not only can this be done quickly, but the real-time reporting means better and faster decision making, and seamless integration between our entire ecosystem of tech provides 100% data accuracy, meaning you’ll always be working with one version of the truth.
5. Auto-reconcile matching orders and invoices
A powerful stock ordering system like the one included as standard in Zonal’s EPoS, will automatically reconcile matching orders and invoices, helping to cut down time spent on manual checks each week, reducing mistakes and freeing up staff from what would previously have been a time-consuming task. This leaves everyone on the team with more time to focus on delivering great experiences for customers.
In addition, having the right tech in place can simplify managing approved suppliers. Being able to automatically reconcile matching orders and invoices or set up order templates can help to save a significant amount of time each week.
6. Get direct control over digital ordering channels to limit or increase your capacity
With a fully integrated tech stack, you have full control over which channels send orders through to the kitchen from one central location. Technology such as Zonal’s enables operators to turn off online ordering during busy periods to allow your staff to keep up with order fulfilment and focus on providing great customer service to those in-venue. This means less stress on the kitchen team and fewer customer complaints. What’s more, with full integration between our digital ordering channels and EPoS, product availability will automatically be updated as sales are made and stock is depleted, meaning your staff won’t need to spend time updating multiple channels if items go out of stock.
7. Remove the need for staff to re-key orders
Integrated hospitality technology like Zonal’s can help speed up service and save staff time. Integrating ordering and payment channels across the business with the main EPoS means staff don’t need to repeat the same task for each ordering channel. In addition, pushing live product availability from your stock management system to your tills and staff handheld ordering devices, means the team will have up-to-the-minute information on stock availability. This results in no wasted time going to the EPoS with orders only to then find out certain menu items are not available and fewer complaints from customers who tell us that one of their biggest bugbears in hospitality is ordering a dish, only to then find out it isn’t available.
8. Remove the headache of finance auditing (and save money) with clear and concise cash and finance workflows
Finance auditing can be time consuming and laborious, however our tech provides complete oversight of how cash is moving through your business. From being able to define by venue whether floats are being used, allowing you to allocate a value and track it through trade; to approval workflows, allowing senior staff to check all expenses are valid and approved, Zonal technology can provide you with the control and oversight you need to effectively manage your business’s finances.
9. Facilitate bookings easily with EPoS-integrated booking and deposit ledger management
Access all the information you need to manage reservations or orders from other channels in one central location, removing the need for staff to check multiple systems and reducing the potential for mistakes. When it comes to bookings, operators can better manage staff rotas with real-time oversight of reservations. A digital booking system also enables customers to edit, manage or cancel their bookings easily, removing the need for staff to update information manually and reducing the chances of no-shows. We know that no-shows are costly for the industry – £17.59bn a year, in fact, with figures having doubled between September 2022 and September 2023.
10. Manage products and pricing from one central location
Keeping on top on products and pricing is a key factor for maintaining a successful business especially when margins are tight, but it’s a task that can be time-consuming, and costly if not done properly. Implementing Zonal’s integrated set of tech solutions allows operators to manage and update product and price information in one central location. What’s more, native integration between Zonal’s EPoS and wider suite of technology means all systems are updated in real-time, including across all consumer-facing channels, which saves operators and their teams time from having to replicate this task across multiple systems.
Technology should do the heavy lifting for staff and operators, freeing up their time to focus on delivering great customer experiences, and providing operators with the tools as well as the headspace to think strategically about how to further improve businesses.
Click here to take a quick 5-minute self-assessment to see how your current tech stacks up in the above areas!
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The Zonal Difference
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Post-Christmas stock GPs low? Improve margins by doing these 10 things
With the madness of Christmas and New Year a distant memory, more time and attention can be given to minimising the impact of the cost-of-living crisis in the year ahead.
In a visit to one of our customers recently, we helped them to carry out eight easy actions that, once implemented, saw GPs start to increase almost immediately – improving their bottom line and making a huge difference to their financial reporting.
By having full visibility of your inventory, you can maximise profit margins, which in turn will help you to make better decisions around purchasing, sales and marketing, enabling you to sell more products and reduce the need to mark down old, unsold stock.
So why not take the opportunity in a quiet moment to focus on getting your stocks in order by completing this checklist:
- Ensure all purchasing and cost prices are correct and ensure all delivery notes are accepted in your EPoS
- Ensure that all old, obsolete products are not being displayed on your EPoS system
- If your POS allows you to set up suppliers behind your products, ensure the correct supplier is enabled as default to ensure you’re ordering stock from the correct place
- If your EPoS system uses recipes, make sure your recipes are correct and up to date with the latest ingredients from the right suppliers
- Double check that all Promotions and Discounts were set up correctly for the Christmas Period – and start thinking about upcoming events for the year
- Triple check that all figures are correct before accepting any new stock orders
- Get into the habit of reporting on your stock every 7 days, in order to keep a firm eye on your weekly usage of stock and make sure you’re spotting any potential issues/mistakes as quickly as possible
- You may benefit from additional stock training to ensure that your team are following the correct stock procedure – Get in touch with your provider to find out what training they have available to upskill your team
If you’re using a purchase-to-pay solution that’s fully integrated with your EPoS:
- Ensure all deliveries have been reconciled and accepted in your purchase-to-pay solution
- Check all products and prices are correct in your purchase-to-pay solution
Please get in touch to learn more about how Zonal technology can help operators manage costs.
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Assessment 4:
Maximising margins
Zonal’s Maximising Margins self-assessment
Answer a few short questions to identify whether your tech helps you squeeze every percentage of profit from your operations. At the end you’ll get personalised guidance to help you maximise your margins.
Take our other self-assessments to see if you score just as well across other key areas.
Assessment 1:
Reducing administration tasks
Zonal’s Reducing Administration Tasks self-assessment
Answer a few short questions to identify whether your hospitality tech helps you combat any admin time-sinks or manual tasks that could be automated. At the end you’ll get personalised guidance to help you maximise your staffing resources and remove the manual grind.