Staff Meals: Chopsticks at Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong

Hong Kong is a city that is full of great, award-winning restaurants and chefs. While most are familiar with these restaurants as guests, few get to witness the type of food being served to staff. What’s on the menu for those that work there? For the next instalment of our Staff Meals series, we visit Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong‘s colleague restaurant, Chopsticks.

 

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Originally known as “The Mandarin,” Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong on 5 Connaught Road is the luxury hospitality group’s first flagship property opened in 1963. At the time of completion, the Hong Kong Flagship was the tallest building in the city and represented the pinnacle of Asian luxury and hospitality. Since then, Mandarin Oriental has become a global empire with 41 hotels across four continents and 26 Michelin stars across its restaurants.

Catering to a diverse team from around the world, Chopsticks serves a constantly changing menu curated by its dedicated head chef, Harry. Featuring a salad bar, noodle station, drinks station, and ice cream fridge, the buffet-style colleague’s restaurant maintains a well-balanced spread of meat, fresh vegetables, soup, carbs, and seafood while keeping the team’s various preferences in mind. With the chocolate and pastry rooms just next door, leftover desserts routinely make their way to the restaurant as a welcome treat. On the day of our visit, we were treated to sweets from The Mandarin Cake Shop.

Escorted through a maze of tucked-away corridors, we found our way past pastry-filled trolleys and off-duty staff to Chopsticks. With windows facing Victoria Harbour, the restaurant has a direct view of AIA and the city’s skyline. Recently renovated, the lighting, interiors, booth tables, and seating have all been redone. Allowed to remain are uplifting slogans and a fan made up of chopsticks containing the names of colleagues from decades past, keeping the soul of the space intact.

Home to nine highly-regarded bars and restaurants including Man Wah, The Aubrey, Clipper Lounge, Mandarin Grill + Bar, and Café Causette, Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong is looking to set a new standard in food waste reduction for luxury hospitality through Winnow‘s food waste technology. Part of a larger group-wide sustainability initiative, MO Hong Kong is one of four pilot hotels to apply the cutting-edge AI technology we witnessed firsthand.

Chopsticks, Mandarin Oriental’s colleague’s restaurant, was chosen to be the first test restaurant as it was the busiest, accommodating around 750 staff across four departments. Through Winnow, the hotel has saved over 4,000 kilos of food waste to date and over HK$200,000. Because of the success rates shown at each pilot property, by the end of 2025, every Mandarin Oriental worldwide will have this system implemented. In Hong Kong, the property will soon implement two more Winnow systems for its prep kitchen and butchers.

“The Winnow system has three functions,” says Simon Guthridge, Executive Sous Chef at Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong. “We have leftover waste, which is the one we mainly focus on, and there is also plate waste and our expired items. At the end of each service — breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper — we weigh all the food by category and then we make a record. This is a very good way to see what colleagues eat and what they don’t so we can adjust our menus accordingly.”

Winnow allows Chopsticks to track exactly what wastage is occurring through its production stream. Designed to be as seamless as possible, the system contains a camera, smart scale, and tablet which is trained to automatically identify over 600 food items and deliver a report on the weight and cost of the food discarded. Over time, Mandarin Oriental can receive the necessary information to improve efficiency, change its behavior, and innovate its preparation techniques.

More details on Mandarin Oriental’s use of Winnow’s food waste technology can be found here.

Video: Ryan Putranto, Samson Jr De Guzman
Interviewer/Producer: Aaron Chow
Special thanks to Jade Sin, Finn Partners and Yammy Wong, MO