Upcycled Food Dining Experience

Food Waste Innovation, in collaboration with Everybody Eats, put on an upcycled food dining experience as part of the New Zealand International Science Festival last month. The event was a three course, fully vegan meal catered by chefs and volunteers and made using food destined for waste. The event was held at local Vegan cafe Kind Company.

Local food rescue KiwiHarvest donated most of the ingredients for the evening and Everybody Eats’ Chefs and volunteers transformed these into a high quality three course meal. Everybody Eats are a charitable dining concept based in Auckland, with a pop up in Wellington who provide restaurant style three course meals on a pay-as-you-feel basis, making the meals accessible to all and breaking down barriers of social isolation and food insecurity, all while saving precious kai from going to waste.

Amongst the three courses were products developed by Food Waste Innovation’s Upcycled Food Lab which had been processed from food by-products otherwise destined for waste. These products included crackers made from wonky carrots, fruit snacks made from blemished persimmons, tomato paste made from damaged tomatoes, and beer and ginger beer made using surplus bread. Throughout the evening, experts from the Food Waste Innovation research theme, talked to guests about the issue of food waste and the science behind the upcycled products they were sampling.

At the conclusion of the evening, guests were welcome to donate whatever amount they chose for the meal, all proceeds going back to the charities Everybody Eats and KiwiHarvest to help them in the food waste reduction mahi.

The evening received extremely positive feedback and was acknowledged by local and national media (see the stories linked below).

Thank you to the team at Everybody Eats, KiwiHarvest, NZ International Science Festival, and Kind Company, as well as our Food Waste Innovation team members who helped make this event a great success.

Media coverage:
Otago Daily Times: Great Taste No Waste
RNZ: Feasting on Recycled Food