【Het Leven in Nederland 11】Instock Den Haag & Foodsharing Delft

Written on Jun. 26, 2019

My friend and I just visited Instock Den Haag last quarter and had a wonderful lunch there. Instock is a restaurant that turns surplus food into delicious meals. Together with the other two branches in Amsterdam and Utrecht, Instock has saved more than 715 tons of food waste since 2014 [1].

The restaurant was founded by 4 former employees from Albert Heijn (a common supermarket brand in the Netherlands). In 2014, with a deep concern for food waste in their working place, these employees attended a business competition and launched the Instock project — a pop-up restaurant in central Amsterdam that uses surplus food from local supermarkets for cooking. The project turned out to be a big success, and then in 2015, the “Instock food truck” started to drive through the whole country, and a formal restaurant was established in Amsterdam in the same year.

Every morning, the staffs from Instock drive their electric vans through the town to collect surplus food from local supermarkets, meat shops, and fish shops. These still-fresh food ingredients include fruits and vegetables without good looking, bread that is about to expire, and crook fish [2]. The menu of the day is then decided by the chefs from Instock.

“That makes it a bit scary some days because most cooks love structure and predictability. But we do get to be creative on a daily basis,” said Instock’s head chef Lucas Jeffries [3]. Rescuing these foods not only reduces waste but also help the climate by reducing a great amount of carbon footprint and water usage.

The concept of rescuing food is realized in TU Delft, too. By collecting and cooking leftover food from local (super)markets with the help of volunteers, students in TU Delft get involved in the movement once a month and contribute themselves to the food waste issue. The team of Foodsharing Delft is originated from Green Office TU Delft, but now they operate on their own.

I joined the food sharing events three times this quarter, and it was really nice to meet new people and make friends with others during the process. People chat, cook, eat, and clean the kitchen together, which creates connections between people. Another interesting thing for me is that there will be unexpected ingredients to cook with, such as couscous and cherry radish.

References

[1] The official website of Instock: https://www.instock.nl/en/

[2] The video about Instock and their motivation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ51rkGyCL4

[3] “The Restaurant Chain With Nothing But Food Waste On The Menu”, Huffpost, 2018