A Network of Culinary Pioneers

“The idea came up at a con­fer­ence in Hawaii that dealt with diets and the health of our food,” Melissa Kogut, Chefs Collaborative exec­u­tive direc­tor, told Organic Connections. “A num­ber of lead­ing chefs from around the coun­try were there, and they got to talk­ing about sus­tain­abil­ity in our food sys­tem. They were really ahead of their time because this was not a topic that was being spo­ken about, and the influ­ence of chefs was just start­ing to blos­som. They felt that they wanted to use their influ­ence to help them­selves, their peers and con­sumers under­stand how to make bet­ter pur­chas­ing deci­sions when it comes to food.”

Now 12,000 mem­bers strong, today Chefs Collaborative assists chefs in uti­liz­ing locally and sus­tain­ably pro­duced ingredients—which many times is not so easy. “When a chef is try­ing to run a sus­tain­able restau­rant kitchen, there’s a lot of pres­sure to try to do it all,” Melissa said. “It’s really hard to do it all because so much depends on the way a restau­rant sources food and whether the menu is flex­i­ble. We always say start with one thing. If it’s sourc­ing pota­toes locally from a farmer who’s using sus­tain­able meth­ods, do that. Once you’ve mas­tered that, go on to the next thing. We offer infor­ma­tion and inspi­ra­tion so the chef can fig­ure out how to take those next steps.”

Chefs Collaborative pro­vides its assis­tance through numer­ous chan­nels. Each year the orga­ni­za­tion hosts a national sum­mit, a gath­er­ing of chefs, food pro­fes­sion­als and media for a two-day edu­ca­tional and expe­ri­en­tial con­fer­ence. Through the Chefs Collaborative web­site, there is a wide selec­tion of pub­li­ca­tions avail­able for many dif­fer­ent aspects of becom­ing a local and sus­tain­able chef, includ­ing cook­ing advice, sourc­ing dif­fer­ent items, and uses of grains.

“Our energy is focused on trou­bleshoot­ing and fig­ur­ing out how to help chefs bridge the bar­ri­ers, such as sourc­ing meat, for instance,” Melissa con­tin­ued. “Meat is one of the biggest chal­lenges for chefs because they may be inter­ested in sourc­ing local grass-fed beef and it just may not exist in the right quan­ti­ties or at the right price points. Smaller restau­rants or mid-size restau­rants may address the chal­lenge by work­ing with the whole ani­mal, but that doesn’t work for every restau­rant menu. Following that exam­ple, we offer edu­ca­tional ses­sions on how to cut up an ani­mal, how to use more of the parts, how to talk about it with your cus­tomers, and how to train your staff to talk about it.

The orga­ni­za­tion has also brought par­tic­u­lar focus to one aspect that can be espe­cially difficult—seafood. “We are prob­a­bly most known for our work around edu­cat­ing chefs on sus­tain­able seafood, and we’re really proud of that,” said Melissa. “We’ve col­lab­o­rated with an ocean con­ser­va­tion group called Blue Ocean Institute to pro­duce an online edu­ca­tional tuto­r­ial for chefs so that they can know what ques­tions to ask, how to develop a menu, and how to source sus­tain­able seafood.”

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In addi­tion, Chefs Collaborative con­nects chefs up to local pro­duc­ers. “We call our­selves ‘col­lab­o­ra­tive’ because even though the focus of our work is on help­ing chefs run more sus­tain­able restau­rants, we couldn’t do that with­out the farm­ers and fish­er­men and arti­san pro­duc­ers that we work with,” Melissa explained. “So they make up our mem­ber­ship as well. At the com­mu­nity level we run pro­grams where chefs and pro­duc­ers come together, where chefs come to learn about a prod­uct. We’ve had what we call ‘speed-dating ses­sions’ in which we bring farm­ers and chefs together. We set up the farm­ers at dif­fer­ent tables and the chefs rotate around the room until a bell rings, just so that they can get to know one another and have con­ver­sa­tions. Farmers can talk about what they pro­vide and how they work, and at the end of the day busi­ness rela­tion­ships can be formed.”

It was in 2007 that Melissa got involved with Chefs Collaborative—and it was like a dream come true. “I became exec­u­tive direc­tor in 2007,” she related. “My back­ground is in com­mu­nity orga­niz­ing and non­profit man­age­ment, with long­time inter­est in food. As I was mak­ing a deci­sion on a career change, it became clear to me that doing some­thing to impact our food sys­tem was where I wanted to be work­ing. I really lucked out; this is a great orga­ni­za­tion. I like the organization’s direc­tion of change—working with chefs who are so influential.”

To Melissa, the time couldn’t be bet­ter to be involved with such an activ­ity. “The issue is so hot right now, and I don’t mean that this is just a trend,” she said. “I really do feel like it’s here to stay for a vari­ety of reasons—because it’s on con­sumers’ minds, it’s on everyone’s mind; so every­where we look we see that restau­rants are talk­ing about where they are sourc­ing their food. There is a lot of inter­est. The aware­ness has never been bet­ter or deeper.

“Our vision is that, ulti­mately, sus­tain­abil­ity is going to be sec­ond nature in every restau­rant kitchen,” Melissa con­cluded. “Clearly the top chefs of our world are extremely influ­en­tial, and we want them to be voices for the cause of sustainability.

For more infor­ma­tion and plen­ti­ful resources, please visit www.chefscollaborative.org.