Jasmin Martin and David Johannes Suchy opened the world’s first vegan and zero waste restaurant – Frea, in Berlin’s Mitte district. Both the owners and Halfdan Klufden, former Sous-Chef of Silo restaurant – the first zero waste restaurant in the UK, have a passion to do away with pointless restaurant kitchen waste.
Everything on the Frea menu is made in-house, from sourdough bread to hazelnut butter, kombucha, kefir and daily fresh pasta. The organic produce deliveries arrive at Frea without any packaging, and are scheduled daily to avoid any food spoiling because it doesn’t get used in time. Leftover herbs are used to create flavoured oil to sell and for use in the kitchen.
“Gersi” the in-house Oklin composter, located in a prime location on the way to the restroom, guarantees much diner curiosity and is a novel way to get people thinking about restaurant waste. The usual routine when Gersi is up and running, is that kitchen and plate scraps are brought to the composter at the end of each day. (The kitchen re-uses 5-litre capacity plastic buckets which their oil is delivered in, to collect waste during the day, and can fill up to fifteen buckets per day).
This Oklin composter model has a max capacity of 25 kilograms, though the restaurant doesn’t reach capacity each day since they started focussing on dinner only. Gersi, the Oklin composter, can reduce waste by 90% every twenty four hours, so there is enough space to fill it every day and empty it about once a week, when farmers that Frea work with, like Wilde Gartnerei, collect the compost, to add it back into the ground to help grow more vegetables for the restaurant.
Read more on Forbes.
