Your questions answered
Everything buyers ask us about Winnow, from how the AI works to what happens after install. Pricing questions are on the pricing page.
About Winnow
Winnow is an AI food waste system for commercial kitchens. It measures what a kitchen throws away, automatically and with no extra work for staff, then forecasts how much to produce for each service. Winnow runs in 3,500+ kitchens across 90+ countries, where clients typically cut food costs 2 to 8%.
Commercial kitchens with real food volume: hotels, resorts, contract caterers, cruise ships, casinos and retail foodservice. Winnow runs in single independent properties and in groups with hundreds of sites, with a product tier matched to each kitchen's size.
Winnow runs in 3,500+ kitchens, including hotel groups such as Hilton, Marriott and Accor, contract caterers including Compass Group and ISS, cruise lines including Costa Cruises, and retailers including IKEA.
Yes. Winnow has been a Certified B Corporation since 2017, which means it is independently assessed against social and environmental performance standards and legally accountable for balancing profit with people and planet.
Both. Single properties run Winnow to protect F&B margin, using Foresight or Track where a full Vision system is not justified. Groups add Winnow Hub to benchmark property against property. Winnow runs in 3,500+ locations, from boutique hotels to resorts.
How it works
A camera photographs food as it enters the bin and a connected scale weighs it. Winnow's AI identifies the item and logs its weight, cost and reason automatically. It recognises over 1,000 food items and captures a burst of 30+ images per disposal, selecting the clearest frame.
Throw & Go® is Winnow Vision's fully automated recording mode. Staff bin food exactly as they normally would, with no scanning, and the AI records the item and weight in under a second.
With Winnow Vision, Throw & Go records every disposal with no scanning and no manual input, so your team bins food as they do now and the whole waste stream is captured rather than the fraction people remember to log. Winnow delivers 80% data accuracy across all of those transactions. Winnow Foresight works differently: it forecasts production rather than recording disposals.
Yes. The Vision range measures pre-consumer waste from kitchen preparation and overproduction. VisionPW uses a motion sensor camera to measure post-consumer plate waste left by guests.
Yes. Winnow Foresight predicts how much your kitchen should produce, service by service, so teams make the right amount from the start. Forecasts are twice as accurate, factor in occupancy and your chef's own adjustments, run on mobile, and need no hardware.
No. With Winnow VisionAI and Throw & Go there is no category selection and no change to how the team works, so training is minimal. Gen 5 shows fewer choices on screen. Winnow Foresight needs no in-kitchen training at all, because there is nothing for the team to record.
Getting set up
A pole-mounted unit assembles in about 15 minutes. Units can be pole mounted or wall mounted. No technician needed. The AI is pre-trained, so the system produces accurate data from day one. Foresight and Track need no installation.
Every site gets a structured 100-day onboarding programme, coaching, and webinars delivered by our zero waste culinary advisor Chef Vojtech Vegh, followed by ongoing monthly support.
Winnow runs a structured 100-day onboarding programme, then ongoing kitchen coaching and skills sessions. AI finds where the cost sits; people change how the kitchen works. Clients report a culture shift, not just a report.
Winnow phases rollouts site by site to keep disruption low. Because the AI is pre-trained, each new site produces accurate data immediately. Winnow has multiple deployments with clients with 100+ locations.
Results and reporting
Clients typically cut food waste in half and reduce food costs by 2 to 8%. Together they save more than $100 million a year, equal to 70 million meals and 122,000 tonnes of CO₂e avoided.
Clients routinely report ROI within 6 to 12 months. Winnow fees are typically covered 2 to 10 times over by food cost savings, and sites cut food purchasing costs by 2 to 8%. Across all customers, Winnow users save more than $100m a year.
Kitchens see usable data within the first week and measurable reduction within months. Most sites cut food waste in half and reduce food costs 2 to 8% within the first year.
Winnow records every discarded item with its weight, cost, food type and reason, and delivers daily reports chefs act on before the next service. Winnow Hub consolidates it across sites, brands and regions for group reporting.
Yes. With the Vision range, every disposal is weighed on a connected scale, timestamped and photographed. ESRS E5-5 requires companies to state whether figures come from direct measurement or estimation. Data is exportable by site, date range, service and category, with weight, cost and CO₂e.
Winnow runs in 3,500+ locations across 90+ countries, with 95% client retention. Customers together save more than $100m a year, equal to 70m meals and 122,000 tonnes of CO₂e avoided. IKEA cut food waste 54% across 500+ kitchens, saving $37m.
Every service adds data. Winnow's AI keeps learning your items, menus and patterns, so the forecast sharpens as it runs.Trained on over 1 billion images.
Scale and integration
Winnow matches product to site size and reports it all in one place: Track for small sites, VisionControl for medium, VisionAI with Throw & Go for large, VisionPW for plate waste. Winnow Hub benchmarks site against site, proves reductions against target, and exports CSRD-ready evidence.
Yes. Winnow’s REST API connects automated waste tracking data smoothly with third-party applications, external data warehouses, and custom analytics pipelines. You can see more information about our API here. For custom integrations with your menu, recipe, inventory or POS systems, reach out to us here.
Winnow pricing has two parts: a one-time configuration fee per system covering setup, team training and initial support, and an ongoing subscription quoted per site. There is no public price list, because a 40-room boutique and a high-volume resort are different problems. Fees are typically covered 2 to 10 times over by food cost savings. See the pricing page for more.
Ready to reduce food costs in your kitchens?
See how Winnow helps your kitchens produce the right amount. Kitchens worldwide trust it.