Serve & Sustain
A network of hospitality workers who care about the sustainable future of our city.
We believe through story telling and shared experiences, we can mobilise a group of passionate workers to ensure we are improving our practises and decreasing our waste.
Collaborative project by local artists and creatives, supported by Native Coffee and Green Arts NI
Thoughtfully crafted to elevate what matters most.
LETS TALK ABOUT IT…
Belfast loves hospitality. We love a good coffee, a pint, a late night scran, and any excuse to gather around a table for a chat. Inside the walls of our cafés, restaurants, pubs and bars the people of our city meet, work, celebrate, make connections and share stories every day. Behind all the laughs and messin’ is a sector facing some pretty big questions. Rising costs, food waste, changing supply chains and the climate emergency aren’t distant issues for hospitality workers. They show up in the kitchen, the stock room, the deliveries, the bins and everyday service. Serve & Sustain is about bringing the people who experience these challenges together and giving them a space to talk about what sustainability actually looks like in hospitality.
Hospitality is one of Belfast’s most diverse sectors. It brings together people from different neighbourhoods, cultures and backgrounds. Chefs, baristas, bartenders, kitchen porters, managers, producers, students and everyone in between. Despite our different roles, there are plenty of things we have in common: the graveyard shifts, the pressures, the problem-solving and the constant challenge of making things work with what we have. There is a huge amount of knowledge already within the sector. Serve & Sustain is about connecting that knowledge.
The project brings together people from across Belfast’s hospitality sector. So many of us love what we do because of the people we meet and the mad things that happen in our work lives every day. We all live through shared experiences; the shifts that make us question our whole lives, to the unbreakable bond we form with our co-workers and regulars. So many of us are also creatives, artists and thinkers struggling in yet another under-funded industry where we have to supplement our income with part-time gigs. We care about our city, we care about our planet, we care about how we live on it and how we take care of it. Sustainable change doesn’t happen through a list of things we should be doing. It happens when the people who understand the sector best are given the opportunity, knowledge and confidence to shape what comes next.
HOSPITALITY AS A VITAL SECTOR IN NORTHERN IRELAND
Job Volume: Around 55,000–60,000 jobs, including a significant portion of food, drink, and hotel roles.
Industry Trends: Employment in the sector hit a record high in summer 2025 before declining slightly by 3.5% in the latter part of the year.
Challenges: The industry is currently facing staffing challenges, with 84% of employers reporting difficulties filling vacancies, and high staff turnover rates, sometimes up to 75%.
Part-time Focus: Hospitality is a major employer of part-time workers, with approximately 60% of jobs in the sector being part-time.
Economic Impact: Tourism and hospitality contribute roughly £1bn to the Northern Ireland economy.
NISRA; Department for the Economy; Tourism Northern Ireland; Hospitality &
Tourism Skills Network (HATS), State of the Workforce 2023; Hospitality Ulster
What’s Next??
Late Night Art - Thurs October 1st
Kerry has created drawings in direct response to interviews collected with film maker Adam Bradley, showing sustainability at different scales. Centering human relationships, they frame the industry as ecological, making visible its interconnected parts, created by a culture that is unmistakably Belfast.
On the night, drawings will be shown alongside stills from the videos taken by Adam. It will be in collaboration with DJ collective, 'Arch of Light', who will play from 6-8 pm. They will also provide a light show, shining through Kerry's drawings to cast shadows under the Native sails onto those present. The intention is to physically place people into the drawings. Lights from Native will also hopefully be alluring, drawing people in across the river.
Kerry Whelan is an artist based in Belfast. With a background in architecture her artistic work is underpinned by understandings of spatial justice and critical understandings of the built environment. Having worked in Italy and Copenhagen on experimental projects around architecture, often in the NGO world, she developed artistic methods as research tools in her work. Now, primarily working in oil paint or installation, she employs a critical spatial analysis to projects as advocacy. Her work often addresses community autonomy, advocating for community led organisation.
MUSIC: Arch of Light
HAVE YOUR SAY
Come down, talk to us and interact with our question boxes… Help us decide where this goes…
EVERYONE has a say here