Best Café
Sponsored by Yeo Valley
A café run by charity Crisis, which seeks to help the homeless and ex-offenders into the world of work. Trainees learn either hospitality skills from cooking, or front of house management and barista training. Under the guidance of the experienced team they can receive further training for recognised qualifications in food hygiene and barista skills. Extra expertise is developed during the 16-week programme, ranging from IT to interview techniques and job search skills. Café from Crisis LDN is one of three inspirational social enterprise training Cafes that contributes to Crisis's aims of ending homelessness.
crisis.org.uk/get-involved/cafe-from-crisis
Best Street Food Trader
Sponsored by the Soil Association
A street-food trader making Eastern Mediterranean-inspired dishes using goat meat from the dairy industry, British rose veal and locally sourced seasonal vegetables. Gourmet Goat uses high-welfare British male calves that would otherwise be euthanised at birth, and its organic flatbreads are made by E5 Bakehouse, a Hackney-based bakery that also operates a traineeship for refugee women. The stall holds a three-star rating with the SRA and co-founders Nick and Nadia work with the local council on sustainable eating, advising counsellors how to develop the area’s food offering in line with sustainable practices.
Best Casual Restaurant
Sponsored by Buffalo Trace
A fast-casual restaurant from the brains behind Chick 'n' Sours, which extols the virtues of free-range, high-welfare chickens from a single Somerset farm with whom the team has a very close relationship. They’ve installed an on-site biodigester that’s so far processed more than 7,000kg of food waste, plus their waste oil system means all used cooking oil is collected and recycled into biofuels.
Best Pub
Sponsored by Baileys
A gastropub that serves as the London home of Riverford, an organic farm in Devon and greengrocer, the Duke serves almost entirely organic produce and is an outspoken evangelist for the movement in the UK. The pub also strives to reduce food waste wherever possible, employs recycling and upcycling techniques, and sets up trading relationships with similarly ethical businesses.
Best Pop-Up or Residency
Sponsored by Berry Bros & Rudd
Last year’s pop-up was the first London outpost under the wastED banner. Run by iconic farm-to-table chef and sustainable food evangelist Dan Barber – whose restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns, run in conjunction with the Stone Barns Center For Food And Agriculture, is a mainstay in the World’s 50 Best. wastED London used waste products from supermarkets and other suppliers in an eclectic and ambitious menu on the rooftop at Selfridges, which featured everything from kale trees to fish heads.
THE JUDGING PANEL
The category winners were selected by a judging panel made up of the Foodism team, Square Up Media staff and individuals across the food and drink industry
+ Jon Hawkins, editor, Foodism
+ Mike Gibson, deputy editor, Foodism
+ Tim Slee, CEO, Square Up Media
+ Frances Cottrell-Duffield, MD, Tonic PR and Communications
+ Adam Hyman, founder, CODE
+ Emma Cullingford, head of food-related fundraising, Action Against Hunger
+ Chantelle Nicholson, head chef, Tredwells
+ Peter Gordon, chef and restaurateur
+ Charlie Gent, managing director, Make Shift
+ Clare Finney, food writer
+ Lizzie Rivera, founder, BICBIM
+ Hugh Richard Wright, food writer and consultant
+ Victoria Stewart, food writer
Judges were excluded from judging categories where there was a potential conflict of interest.
Best Food Market
Sponsored by Pic's Peanut Butter
A street-food market, community hub and incubator for start-ups in a site made out of former shipping containers. Pop is more than just a street-food market, though – it includes a number of social enterprises, a radio station and even a local barbershop, and is committed not just to providing space for local businesses, but also to mentoring those businesses and helping them launch in permanent locations. Through its Community Investment Scheme, its businesses pledge a minimum of one hour per week to participate in projects that positively impact local residents, and it also hosts The People’s Fridge, an innovative food-waste scheme.
Best Bar
Sponsored by Silent Pool Gin
Super Lyan
Formerly White Lyan, this bar continues owner Ryan Chetiyawardana – aka Mr Lyan’s – war on food waste with inventive cocktails. Since the opening of his first bar, Chetiyawardana has eschewed fresh ingredients and ice for distilled flavours and chilled liquids. While his bar Dandelyan has received global acclaim, it’s at Super Lyan his ethos is most evident, serving pre-bottled and draught cocktails in a pared-back space.
Best Social Enterprise
Sponsored by Seafood From Norway
A charity that redistributes thousands of tonnes of otherwise wasted food to partner charities in London and across the UK. Based in Deptford, the charity takes food from large-scale businesses, uses volunteers to process it at its headquarters, and then redistributes it to more than 6,723 charities fighting hunger in more than 1,300 towns across the UK.
Best Fine Dining Restaurant
Sponsored by Our/London Vodka
The Frog’s chef-patron Adam Handling’s operations have a sharp focus on cutting out waste at every stage of preparation and cooking, not least at the ultra-contemporary Frog E1. Fruit and vegetable waste is sent off to be composted and used on their farm in West Sussex to grow produce that’s then used in the restaurants. Every bit of that produce is used in the group’s cooking, whether for the restaurants or transferred (on foot) to Handling’s sustainable delicatessen Bean & Wheat, where any food not used from the previous day’s service at The Frog E1 is transformed into a meal.
Positive Change Hero
Sponsored by Karma Cola
Stephanie Wood (School Food Matters)
The founder of the School Food Matters initiative as well as the School to Market programme, which, in partnership with Whole Foods Market and the Whole Kids Foundation, helps schoolchildren across the UK connect with their food and learn more about the specifics and ethics of sustainable food production. To date, School Food Matters has involved more than 40,000 schoolkids, with hands-on farm visits, cooking classes. It's also donated £40,000 to 32 schools to nurture their own vegetable gardens through the School Garden Grants Scheme.
See the whole Foodism 100 list and read more about the initiative here
