Transforming Food Systems from the Professional Kitchen

I love kitchens because they feed people, but the first time I entered a professional kitchen, I experienced equal parts enchantment and terror. Kitchens are fascinating nests of culinary possibilities, and they can also be obscure battlefields for cooks. Changing seasons is as disruptive as in the outside world, but instead of going from cotton to corduroy, we switch from rhubarb to apples.

Making friends is also tricky in the kitchen. Staff turnover is so high that once we become close to any cook or server, they seem to prance out the delivery door and into the next restaurant. Moods swing freely, and people often get hurt, both mentally and physically. Kitchens are competitive; only the fastest and toughest cooks persevere. Ultimately, we stay because the stakes are high, our reputation as creatives and craftspeople is in play, and we buy into it to survive and build a career. Yet, sadly, there is little to remind you of what got you into cooking in the first place. 

Outside of the Social Gastronomy Movement, very few people associate food security with professional kitchens. Traditionally, they are positioned more as gastronomic temples than as providers of quality hunger relief. The concepts seem not to intersect, not because they are mutually exclusive, but because they do not stand together in the minds of many of us. We have relegated hunger relief efforts to collectives that are often less equipped and knowledgeable about handling food production successfully from the get-go than a professional kitchen is. Soup kitchens, for example, are important actors in the fight against food insecurity in communities. Nevertheless, they tend to lack production capacity, rely on volunteer hands, and are not always the most experienced at the trade. Our efforts would be more effective if we considered all establishments capable of serving meals, capable of safeguarding the integrity of their communities, and soothing their hunger, too.

I am relieved I did not have to experience intimately how a world I was so enamored with crumbled but also a little bit sad that I was not there to see it transform firsthand. When COVID-19 stripped restaurants of patrons, there was nothing left to lose. For a second, it was quiet; everyone was scared. Standing on the edge, chefs and restaurateurs gained some perspective and reconnected with their primary purpose: to feed people. Following the steps of veterans in the field, such as World Central Kitchen and Gastromotiva, suddenly, fine dining restaurants repurposed their kitchens to prepare meals for first responders and hurt communities. Taco trucks turned into drive-through hunger relief kitchens. Social gastronomy was sprouting everywhere, and for the first time in what seemed forever, chefs were gaining visibility for their efforts. It took a shocking turn of events for kitchens to reconnect to their primary motivation, and many of them have continued their socially purposed gastronomic programs to this day. But reorganizing how they use their resources to feed their communities is just one way of making a difference, and chefs' interventions can amount to more.

There is now a prevalent feeling of urgency to act amongst those directly affected by the environmental and social challenges that threaten our food systems, which immediately involves the hospitality industry. The food systems we so clumsily navigate nowadays are a result of millennia of agricultural evolution. According to FAO, they are "the entire range of actors and their interlinked value-adding activities involved in the production, aggregation, processing, distribution, consumption, and disposal of food products." Our adaptation of a system working perfectly fine in nature made up a more complicated and more divisive one. The food chain is now a part of systems that disfavor the already marginalized, weaken the feeble, and automatically oppress those of us who were not lucky enough to be born in what the status quo considers the right place and the right time. The only good news is that change is starting to happen whether you live in the global north or south. 

Taking apart a system, any system, is no easy feat. Think back to the first time a machine broke down on you. If you are part of the less daring population pool, as am I, troubleshooting it probably involved a couple of phone calls in search of a qualified adult with a toolbox. It probably took some digging around in that drawer you never use for a set of instructions, too. Now, imagine how you would fix something without a manual, a toolbox, and unfortunately without many experts to ring for advice either. This is the type of puzzle that systems change frameworks handle, and it involves the collaboration of many people, so many that saying everyone is almost accurate. 

Moving forward, we need to empower kitchens with tools to grow their impact positively. Equal parts pyromaniacs, blade whisperers, and community educators, the chef's role in transforming our food systems is crucial and needs to become commonplace. Coming from their kitchens, systems change tastes good, and it does so because it is teamwork. Chefs can work together with local farmers creating more secure markets, employ the community in their restaurants, and teach them to eat better and more sustainably. Professional kitchens gather collective input from the thousands of actors directly involved in taking food from the seed to the plate. By connecting everyone, they do not do patchwork on the system. Instead, professional kitchens create a lasting impact. They reshape the agricultural landscape by demanding better soil utilization and nutrient-rich products in their pantries. Chefs have the ability to engage with our communities, build transformative relationships, educate, and bridge socioeconomic gaps. It can all be achieved if we stop cooking for show and start cooking to feed.