Focus Session

»How being a zero waste restaurant shapes the relationship between a chef and his community« (engl.)

How does cooking according a zero-waste philosophy affect the internal and external relationships of a restaurant?

What`s it about?

Zero-waste cooking means more than just not to throw everything away. If your work as a chef or a gastronome is guided by the zero-waste philosophy, a major shift in judging what (still) can be used as food or not is happening. In addition to creative culinary thinking very concrete steps are necessary in order to bring this philosophy into daily implementation.

We wonder how a zero-waste philosophy works in practice? Which ingredients are used and how? How do you communicate the dishes to the guest? In this focus session Douglas McMaster speaks of his experiences on how internal work structures, your thinking about food or the conception of the menu change, as well as how the work with partners and suppliers is affected. We discuss how the communication and relationships within the entire community of a restaurant moves, up to the guest, and what challenges and potential outputs there are.

Moderator

Douglas McMaster is considered as one of the most known representatives of professional zero-waste cooking. In 2010, the Briton opened the first zero-waste pop-up café in Sydney, Australia. Two years later followed by the first zero-waste restaurant in Melbourne. After returning to the UK, the then 26-year-old founded the Silo in Brighton in 2014 and will open it´s successor this year in Lodnon.