How to turn traditional food ‘waste’ into tasty, nutritious meals.

Macknade, one of Kent’s leading foodie destinations, has partnered with the team at Wasted Kitchen to use surplus produce. At the heart of this collaboration, Wasted Kitchen purchases surplus produce from its food hall to create high quality meals, salads, ferments and pickles from what would otherwise be going to waste.

Wasted Kitchen's progress has also been recognised by the BBC, with the brand being shortlisted for Best Street Food, Best Takeaway & Best Small Eatery at the BBC Radio 4 Food & Farming Awards.

“For me, it’s hugely personal,” said Katy Newton, Founder of Wasted Kitchen. “I’ve seen the shocking damage that food waste, plastics and other pollutants can have on the environment and it made me realise that there must be a better way to do things.

“We take the surplus stock, the bits that people simply don’t want, and give it a total new lease of life. This lowers waste and reduces loss in a commercially viable way, something that I think is vital if we’re going to make a real difference to our environmental impact.

“One of the biggest challenges we face is perception. People see waste as just that - waste - rather than ingredients that can be turned into something usable and valuable. We don’t see that as waste; we see it as an opportunity and a resource to help us tackle the climate & food crisis we’re seeing across the globe.”

Wasted Kitchen’s partnership with Macknade also involves a number of other initiatives, including Skillshare programmes that teach participants about food sustainability & nutrition through interactive workshops.

Katy continues: “We’ve come a long way in the past five to ten years. People are more aware of what they’re consuming, but there’s still a long way to go. We need more partnerships like Wasted Kitchen and Macknade - ones that provide a benefit to stores that sign up with them, as well as giving consumers a fairly priced way of accessing high-quality food that ultimately lowers the shocking amount of good food being discarded.

“In the next five years, I want to see Wasted Kitchens everywhere, in every corner of the country and working with every supermarket, shop and farm store. I want to see us make a real difference in food waste and turn the corner toward a true circular economy of food.”

Rosie Collins, Marketing Director for Macknade said: “As a business that started life as a working farm, we have a real, generational connection to the land and the environment, which is why partnerships like our work with Wasted Kitchen are so important to us.

“They’re about us trying to make a lasting difference to our world in a commercial manner. Provenance and traceability are critical to us, and we consider every step that gets our suppliers’ produce to our customers’ tables, so we hate to see anything from that cycle get thrown away because it simply didn’t look right.

“We want to be trailblazers. We want to show that there can be another way of doing things, that waste isn’t always waste, and that we all need to stand up as custodians of our planet and make a difference wherever we can.”