From Fit-Out to Stand Out – A New Guide to Help Hospitality Redesign and Reinvent Venues
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- New guide launched to help hospitality sector redesign venues that cut carbon, costs and keep customers coming back
- Redesigning Hospitality Venues: the Low Carbon Fit-Out Guide was launched to Zero Carbon Forum members at an exclusive event on 1 May
Sustainability is increasingly becoming a core part of how hospitality venues are designed and fitted out.
Operators are embracing this shift to reduce emissions, save money, improve efficiency and create standout spaces.
However, many in the industry still face a gap: they want to design more sustainably but don’t know where to start. They're looking for inspiration, guidance, and reassurance that it's possible to do this well without compromising on cost, quality or timelines.
Launched on 1 May, Redesigning Hospitality Venues: the Low Carbon Fit-Out Guide supports property managers, designers and developers to reduce emissions, cut waste, and save money, starting at the design stage.
Created by Zero Carbon Forum, the guide tackles common concerns in the industry: that sustainable fit-outs are more expensive, more complex or slower to deliver. It shows instead how to achieve net zero targets while making efficiencies and reducing costs.
With case studies from forum members including St Austell Brewery and Wagamama, the guide shares practical tips from those already making low-carbon design work, highlighting what to keep, reuse and remove, and how to make better choices when designing or refurbishing a site.
Sustainable fit-outs are fast becoming standard practice, as our case studies show, and they can unlock significant cost savings and operational efficiencies. We’re excited to launch this new guide to support hospitality property teams who want to deliver inspiring spaces that meet evolving customer expectations and sustainability goals. Mark Chapman, Founder and CEO of Zero Carbon Forum
The guide includes a straightforward framework to support decision-making at every stage of a fit-out:
- Removal – Identify what can be reused or repurposed before disposing of anything.
- Design – Make smart design choices to save money, reduce waste and lower emissions.
- Construction – Align build specifications with your sustainability goals and monitor progress.
It also explains how to set meaningful KPIs and track your impact.
The guide is available to members of the Forum and was launched at a dedicated event in London on 1 May, with more than 40 professionals attending. The Zero Carbon Forum’s director, Bob Gordon, and head of membership, Beth Hinde, hosted a panel session with David Chenery, Object, Space, Place, Alex Neil, Wagamama, and Fabrizio Varriale from RICS.
An executive summary including two of the case studies is available for anyone to download here.
About Zero Carbon Forum
The Zero Carbon Forum is a not-for-profit that provides the UK hospitality and brewing industry with a productive and action-oriented way to collaborate on their sustainability challenges, within their companies and across their supply chains.
The forum is supported by UKH, BBPI and BII, and a third of the UK hospitality and brewing industry are members. The forum allows operators to learn from each other, raise their ambition levels, and tackle the bigger challenges together.
Our Measure-Plan-Reduce-Comply framework helps members measure their emissions, get a plan of reduction actions to deliver individually and collectively, and to comply with investor and stakeholder expectations. They can view industry benchmarks to see how well they are performing against others, and we can uncover and collectively act on the challenges that the wider sector faces, for example, supply chain engagement and food innovation.
The forum has won various FoodService Footprint Awards in 2022, 2023 and 2024 for stakeholder engagement and energy efficiency initiatives.
