A conversation with Matt Orlando, chef, entrepreneur, and former head chef at Noma. He is also the founder of Amass, one of the most circular and fully organic restaurants in the world, which closed at the end of 2022. He then focused on a project in Singapore and is now back in Denmark, currently very busy with, among other things, a new restaurant in Copenhagen.

What happens when someone who worked as a head chef in one of the best restaurants in the world, Noma, starts going deep down the rabbit hole of sustainability and responsibility? Join the fascinating journey of one of the most interesting chefs in the world, who not only redefined what a circular, sustainable restaurant means (and no, it isn’t more expensive to run, and it doesn’t require a lot of tech, etc.) but it does require a completely new mindset and way of thinking.

He shares some fascinating examples and data, like monetary savings- €17,000 in a year on water costs, for instance- which were only possible because of a mindset shift. We talk about the role of fine dining and the hospitality world in transforming the agri-food system, the role of technology, and of course, fermentation, and the VC-funded BS in food tech and fermentation.

We discuss their new restaurant concept, still very much under wraps, but exciting and how they are disrupting the very dirty cacao and chocolate industry with an upcycled, fully organic, price-neutral spent brewers’ grain, which you can already find in “chocolate” cookies in the Nordics without tasting the difference.

RESPONSIBILITY TRANSFORMED MATT’S RESTAURANT APPROACH

Responsibility led Matt to overhaul Amass’ operations, from sourcing to waste reduction. Matt explains the pivotal moment this idea took hold.

“And she says, you’re open now. You’re going, your systems are in place, what’s next? And I was like, what’s next? I’m like, be creative, make people happy, it’s a restaurant. But in that same sentence the word ‘responsibility’ popped into my head, I didn’t even acknowledge it or say it. I just was like, What? Okay, whatever. We just kept having our conversation, for the next two and a half weeks we were closed. That word just permeated my entire being, and I wanted to understand what responsibility meant in the context of a restaurant because I had never worked at a restaurant where that word was part of the vocabulary at all.” Matt Orlando

HOW TO SHIFT THE MINDSET OF RESTAURANT TEAMS

Changing ingrained habits in his kitchen staff is really challenging. Water conservation is an example of turning abstract values into tangible actions.

“At the end of the night when you pull a hundred litres of water out of the back that you’ve been saving up and you show it to everyone because 500 mils here, a litre there. People don’t understand it. … And so, when you show an aggregated mass of something at the end of the night, a hundred litres, and then you quantify that over a year and you give this enormous number, then people are like, oh, there is impact. I am having an impact by doing this.” Matt Orlando

MATT’S DEFINING MOMENT

Matt’s passion for soil health and ecosystems goes back to a farm that redefined ‘organic’ for him.

“Michel’s, come here, and we were kind of away from everyone, and he’s like, ‘Check this out, check this out,’ and he bent down, and we bent down, and we were at eye line with the top of the grass, and there were just hundreds of thousands of bugs flying around. And he’s like, this is organic. And I was like. My head just exploded.” Matt Orlando

SCALING INNOVATION BEYOND FINE DINING KITCHENS

Extending circular practices to mainstream food operations through open-source collaboration and centralised processing hubs is part of Matt’s vision.

“What I want to build is a central processing unit, which we engage with food and beverage operations, whether it’s canteens, hospitals, or other restaurants, where we identify maybe their three largest side streams they’re producing. Generally, in restaurants, it’s like citrus peels, coffee and bread. We then take them back to our space, we process them for them, and then sell them back to them so they then can use them on the menu. Then all of a sudden you don’t have five restaurants talking about doing this. You have 20 restaurants in the vicinity of the CPH that are able to tell the story.” Matt Orlando

OTHER POINTS DISCUSSED

Koen and Matt also talked about:

• Disrupting the chocolate ingredients based food products
• Circular practices from the water savings to the peels of carrots
• The pitfalls of food tech investments and the VC approach

LINKS:

• Amassmo – Instagram profile
• Endless Food
• Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) are locally focused quality assurance systems. They certify producers based on active participation of stakeholders and are built on a foundation of trust, social networks and knowledge exchange
• Regenerative Europe from the Ground Up – EARA report
• Glyphosate Study from Ramazzini Institute

LINKED INTERVIEWS:

• Dan Barber – AI-Powered natural breeding: The End of GMOs, Gene Editing, and CRISPR?
• Dan Barber, great flavour, health benefits and healthy ecosystems can only come from healthy soils not a lab
• Franco Fubini – Delivering unmatched flavour to 2000 of the world’s top restaurant and unlocking consumer demand
• Zach Bush on why all health issues come back to how we treat the soil
• Chuck de Liedekerke – Paying 1600 farmers to change their practices and just raised €15M
• Eric Archambeau – Drawing from his Silicon Valley experience and after having put €300M to work in food and ag tech, now is the moment to raise VC funds writing €100M checks

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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.