Sustainable catering has been a matter close to Maiergrill's heart since 1996

We are a member of the United Against Waste association and Swisstainable - the sustainability label of Switzerland Tourism. We are also inspired by the University of Zurich's guidelines for sustainable catering.

Our sustainability endeavours are a rolling process that is always ongoing.

This is already evident in the following aspects:

A: wave.catering: In order to better fulfil our responsibility for future generations and offer our customers more options for even more sustainable event catering, we created wave.catering in 2020 as a complementary brand to Maiergrill Eventcatering, which is 90% vegetarian and vegan across the entire range of dishes and only uses around 10% meat/fish. At Maiergrill, which specialises in barbecues, the proportion of meat/fish is closer to 20%. The combination of the wave.catering and Maiergrill concepts is a very effective solution, especially for large corporate events that want to implement a specific sustainability policy.

B: Swissness: We source 95% of our meat from Swiss producers and primarily serve Swiss wines and beers brewed in Switzerland in order to keep transport routes short and our ecological footprint as small as possible.

A: Our à discrétion buffets are very often used: the advantage of a buffet is that guests can decide for themselves what they particularly like. A discrétion has the advantage that the guest knows on the first pass that he can go back to the buffet a second, third, .... third time at the buffet and therefore only puts the amount on their plate that they actually want to eat. As a result, the plates usually come back empty.

B: Sustainable reserve management: We have reserves of meat on site, which remain in the cold chain and are only opened when guests eat an exceptionally large amount or have a disproportionate preference for one type of meat or vegetable.

C: Maiergrill is a system event caterer with a clear specialisation in grilled dishes and the matching side dishes, which has the advantage that we can cover a maximum of staging forms with comparatively few menu components. As a result, the consumption of the same components is high, which significantly reduces wastage and returns in contrast to a very broad range.

D: A la minute preparation of the grilled dishes, which allows us to react optimally to actual consumption and only put as much on the grill as is actually consumed.

E: Reusable crockery We use reusable crockery wherever possible and sensible. At wave.catering, we go so far as to produce over 30 dishes in attractive preserving jars (preserving jars with a rubber seal and clamping lid), store them in them, transport them in them and even eat them out of them once they have been brought to the desired temperature at the event venue. In this way, we promote a genuine circular economy.

F: Paperless event: Our event managers used to carry around a 20-page A4 dossier for their event. This has been replaced by an offline tablet, where all documents are available digitally and all information, such as the temperature control of the cold chain, is recorded digitally. Our employees check in and check out on their own smartphone, with digital authorisation from the event manager. This used to be one sheet per employee, per event.

G: Virtually paperless office: We launched our digitalisation project back in 2019, which has now eliminated four media disruptions and combined the very specific processes in event catering on one platform. This has enabled us to massively increase our efficiency and quality "behind the scenes". Redundancies, multiple entries and therefore numerous sources of error have been eliminated. The majority of our correspondence, such as order confirmations and invoices, are also sent as PDFs by e-mail.

A: Waste separation: We consistently separate glass, cardboard, organic waste, household waste, etc. and return these recyclable materials to their next destination.

B: Distribute leftovers: Excess food that has already been prepared is distributed among employees at the end of an event. This is particularly appreciated by the many students, as they are doing something for sustainability and at the same time relieving the budget of their household or even the entire shared flat.

A: Multiple locations in Switzerland, which means that an event is always realised from our nearest location. This is particularly valuable for roadshows where, for example, a customer event is organised in 30 branches throughout Switzerland.

B: Regional pools of players. We have freelancers in all regions of Switzerland who travel directly to the event location. Which reduces the travel balance.

C: Contact with the customer primarily via telephone and video conference instead of meetings at the customer's or our premises.

A: Geothermal probe heat pump at our headquarters Rote Trotte Eventlocation in Winterthur.

B: Energy-efficient preparation directly at the event location on the smokeless Maiergrill.

C: Waste heat as heating: In the cold season, we contribute to heating the event location with the smokeless Maiergrill.