- Ottawa Tourism's À la Carte program, run with La Tablée des Chefs, has passed 500,000 meals recovered since May 2024.
- 23 hospitality partners now take part, including the Lord Elgin Hotel and the Canadian Tire Centre.
- Organizers are looking for more hospitality partners.
Every day, Ottawa's hotels, restaurants, and event venues prepare food for thousands of guests. Behind the scenes, another operation is quietly taking shape: ensuring that perfectly good food doesn't go to waste.
On October 1, Ottawa Tourism announced that its À la Carte food recovery program had surpassed 500,000 meals recovered and redistributed since launching in May 2024.
The initiative, developed in partnership with La Tablée des Chefs, connects hospitality businesses with community organizations that can put surplus food to use. What might otherwise have been discarded is instead redirected to people experiencing food insecurity.
The scale is considerable. According to Ottawa Tourism, the program now involves 23 hospitality partners and has diverted approximately 150,000 kilograms of food from landfill. The organization also estimates that the initiative has prevented 572 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, measured in carbon dioxide equivalent.
Beyond the Dining Room
Among the participating establishments is Ottawa's historic Lord Elgin Hotel, one of several hospitality properties contributing to the initiative.
The Canadian Tire Centre, home of the Ottawa Senators, has also participated through its food service operations, with more than 26,000 meals recovered from the venue since 2024.
These are environments where food production operates on a significant scale, and where predicting exactly how much will be consumed is not always possible.
Food recovery offers a practical response to that uncertainty. Rather than treating surplus food as an inevitable cost of doing business, participating kitchens can redirect suitable prepared food through an established redistribution network.
A Different Measure of Hospitality
Ottawa's culinary identity is often defined by restaurant openings, chef recognition, and the evolution of its dining scene. Less visible is the infrastructure that supports the industry beyond the dining room.
The À la Carte initiative offers another perspective on what hospitality can contribute to a city.
Its success depends not on a single restaurant or chef, but on cooperation between hotels, venues, food service operators, and community organizations. La Tablée des Chefs helps bridge the gap between surplus food and the people who need it, while recipient organizations such as Shepherds of Good Hope provide a connection to the wider community.
And with organizers seeking additional hospitality partners, the program has room to grow.
Half a million meals is an impressive milestone. Perhaps more significant is the possibility that food recovery becomes an ordinary part of how Ottawa's hospitality industry operates.