Tons of food is wasted every year because of aesthetic reasons, while many people starve around the world. Do you think we have a chance to win the battle against food waste?
Spisehuset Rub & Stub has found really innovative way to fight food waste. This is the first restaurant in Copenhagen that tries to reduce the amount of wasted food by using food that other companies cannot sell or don’t want to. The menu of the restaurant consists mainly of discarded food donated from several different supermarkets around CPH.
I should make clear that “discarded food” doesn’t mean that they use nasty, spoiled, and smelly food when preparing the meals. If this was true, you would never step inside this restaurant, right? The term ‘discarded food’, is meant to be understood as food that other companies have in excess; food that they cannot sell, or they are missing space for at the warehouse; it could also be food that is getting close to the expiry date. All of this is completely fresh and edible food that you would normally buy at the supermarket. So why throw it away when it can actually be used in a creative way?
With their unique approach to food waste, Spisehuset Rub & Stub is aiming to draw attention to what we consume, and how – as consumers – we can also help to reduce the waste of completely edible food.
The concept of the restaurant is still very new, and so unique that they still have to buy some products themselves in order to meet customer demands. However, the biggest challenge is for the chef who has to come up with creative and tasty ideas of how to create courses out of the various products they were able to collect or receive everyday. At Spisehuset Rub & Stub you will never get the same meal twice. The menu of the restaurant changes day to day, depending on what products they have at hand for the day. You can be sure that you will never get bored of getting the same courses over and over again.
An interesting fact about this restaurant is that all employees are volunteers. They all have different experiences: some of them probably are not aware how to make a café latte, or have never worked in a restaurant before, but they all share one thing in common – they all believe in what Rub & Stub is trying to achieve, and they do their best to participate and help the restaurant develop further, without expecting anything in return.
Many of us take food for granted, and never actually think about the huge amount of fresh food that is being thrown away every day. Another sad fact is that many people do not have access to enough food. So, instead of throwing away perfectly good food, you can donate it to restaurants like Rub & Stub and help to reduce food waste and feed those in need.