Preparing for the future of food (waste)
Background: RISE is a startup that converts spent grain from breweries into an upcycled flour. Our product is for bakers, chefs, and food manufacturers, especially for those in the LOHAS space. We provide an organic, sustainable, high-protein, low-carb and low-cholesterol source of food. Comes in two flavors: Ale and Porter.
It had been a three months since we first formulated our flour, and we were still discovering new uses for it. Full disclosure: we’re a team of engineers and our culinary skills does not extend beyond overcooking instant ramen. But after repeated trial, error and burn wounds, we were pretty confident that our pudding, cakes and muffins could pass off as semi-pro. Either that or our focus groups were too nice or socially awkward to tell us otherwise. We were especially proud of our bread which had as much protein in a slice as a protein bar. That’s a ham sandwich with 28 grams of protein! After learning what we could from bakers who use our flour, we decided to work with a chef to create the first recycled dinner.
We met Marta through a common friend who introduced her as the best Italian chef she has ever worked with. Back in her hometown in Pistoia, she was the city’s first female pizza chef, smashing gender barriers like it was garlic. After moving to Harlem, she founded UPicnic, a picnic catering and delivery service. A week after receiving our flour, she excitedly called us up with good news. She loved our product and wanted to show us what she had made! Three days later, she showed up at our kitchen with five bags of groceries and immediately jumped into preparing a meal for twelve people. She made us a goat cheese and mushroom quiche with a crunchy crust, some savory tartelettes filled with with leeks and delicately herbed potatoes, pasta with olive oil, baked us healthy muffins chock full of walnuts, and shortbread cookies that brought out the naturally present chocolate and coffee notes in malted barley. We were only six, but we still ate it all.
After recovering from our food comas, we became obsessed with how we could share this wonderful experience with others. In particular, we wanted to showcase the flexibility and natural flavor characteristics of our flour. We decided to host a dinner where we would invite chefs, bakers, brewers, food startups, NGO’s and people from the sustainability and recycling industry. The next morning, I biked to Greenpoint Beer and Ale Co. in Greenpoint (duh) and spoke to the brewers, Jeff and Erik, about our idea. We already had a great relationship since they’ve been helping and guiding us through our project for the last four months. They were totally excited by it, especially after we promised that we wouldn’t be the ones cooking.
They were brewing two beers that day. One was a light Ale called Milk & Honey, and the other was Runner, a dark English Porter. I collected spent grain from each beer in 5 gallon buckets, loaded it in the back of an Uber, went straight to our processing facility, and turned it all into flour. The ale flour was a light beige, with a hint of caramel. The porter blew me away with its dark notes of chocolate, coffee and toasted nuts. We met with Marta at Hana Kitchen, and worked for ten hours straight to prepare a seven-course meal fit for a small wedding. We had 25 people registered for our event, but we prepared for 45 just in case we got hungry. It was incredible to watch Marta turn our upcycled flour into art. We loaded up her creations into another Uber and shipped it straight to the brewery. We rushed throughout the preparations. Then the wait began.
The dinner was supposed to start at seven and we were expecting 30 people. At six thirty the place was empty. Initially, we weren’t too concerned since nothing drives attendance like free food. However, the rain that started the day before still hadn’t stopped. We cursed the weather, but I guess it didn’t know how to take a clue. TBH, It drove our spirits down a little, but we still set out to putting finishing touches on our food and setting out the table. One of our team members had designed a beautiful menu card and feedback form. We also packed our flour in little bags for people to take home and try. We included a recipe just in case they wanted to recreate our muffins. At six forty five the place was still empty and we bittersweetly joked about having enough food to last us a week just in case no one showed up (or if the storm flooded the east river and we were stranded).
But we weren’t that lucky. Or were we? Exactly at seven, a small group of five intrepid swimmers made it to our front doors. We greeted them excitedly and asked them to take a seat wherever. It didn’t matter because it was just us. Then a few minutes later, another group of seven showed up. Then a few more. Then a lot more. By 7:15, we had more than 40 guests! Some people brought their friends, roommates, spouses and SOs. Others had heard about us through their friends and decided to show up. We quickly commandeered two other tables and then the dinner was on its way! We started by welcoming everyone and explaining the purpose of our dinner. Since we were in the tap room, we had to take advantage of the glass windows overlooking the brewery. Erik walked our guests through the brewing process, and explained the physical characteristics of spent grain. We then explained what we do, and how we turn the spent grain into a user-friendly flour. Then, it was time to shut up and eat.
The entire seven-course dinner was vegetarian, and featured our products in different forms. For the first course, we had a barley and vegetable soup inspired by own of our team member’s memories of growing up in Ecuador. We had spent more than six hours slow-cooking vegetables and malted barley in a pot so tall that we had to stand on our toes to look in. We served the soup garnished with shaved Queso Fresco, roasted thyme, and a lemon wedge. The most surprising part was the texture. Since we used fresh spent grain, we couldn’t remove the fibers. Usually that would make the food rough, but now it had cooked so well that it turned soft. It had the mouthfeel of coconut, and I was constantly reminded of the southern Indian cuisine I grew up with. I kept wondering when we had put coconut in the soup, before being reminded that in fact there wasn’t any. It was a hearty soup, and after two days of working non-stop, it was blissful to sip it while listening to rain drops drumming ceiling, accompanying a chorus of curious diners foray into our culinary experiment.
We couldn’t rest for long since the second course was ready to go. I quickly passed around samples of spent grain in its various forms, just so our guests could understand what they were eating. They tried chewing malted barley, played around with squishy fresh wet spent grain, ran their fingers through the dried product, and finally tasted pinches of the flour - our final product. It distracted them long enough for us to serve the second course, a simple bruscetta. We baked a few loaves of rustic bread, sliced it, toasted it, and topped it off with sliced cherry tomatoes smothered in pesto. We were so glad that we had made extra, since our guests finished all of it. We never had the opportunity to taste the bruschetta ourselves, but we believe it went over well. The empty plates were evidence of that.
The third course was a mini quiche filled with goat cheese, roasted mushrooms, garlic, and scallions. The crust was made with the ale flour, and it was one of the most challenging dishes we created. Our flour has very little gluten or starch, and that makes it great for the health conscious consumers. However, it presents a problem to bakers since it either doesn’t stand straight up, and it turns too brittle if baked for longer. We tackled this problem like the engineers we are by experimenting with different kinds of food additives. Finally, inspired by molecular gastronomy, we hit up on a mixture of albumin, algae-extract and tree gum that would make the flour soft, chewy, and allow it to hold its shape. The result was a beautiful quiche that could hold all of the deliciousness inside, even after you take a bite. Luckily, there were exactly five left over for us to try.
The last savory dish of the night was Marta’s signature thin crust Italian pizza. Only six inches wide, they packed some serious flavors thanks to our chef’s aromatic tomato and herb sauce topped with fresh mozzarella. The crust was perfect - light and chewy in the center, crispy around the edges, cheesy and gooey all over. The kitchen staff had to stop what they were doing just to admire her handiwork. There were oohs and aahs as we brought them out and filled the tap room with the smell of freshly baked New York. I got to eat my own pie in the corner of the room. I don’t know about the rest of the team and honestly, I’m selfishly glad I got my piece.
At this point, most of our guests were full. But keeping with her heritage, Marta continued to mount a subtle yet focussed campaign on their taste buds. The first dessert was the same muffin she had baked us earlier. However, it now came with a twist in the form of two small cups of sauces that allowed diners to customize their muffin. The first was a light brown milky caramel sauce that reminded me of toffee, and the second was a light and fluffy cream based sauce that wasn’t sweet at all, just the way I liked it. Our guests were introduced to the differences between the flavors of our flours for the first time. They were genuinely surprised to learn that the spent grain from different beers had their own unique flavor profiles. This diversity is a feature that we embrace in our product lines, and celebrate through our cooking.
The sixth course was a scoop of french vanilla ice cream topped with crushed shortbread cookies. Full disclosure: we originally made the cookies, but they got damaged and so we turned them into a crumble instead. Marta placed a large piece in a wide glass, scooped in the ice cream, topped it off with the crumble, and drizzled some of the caramel sauce on top. The result was scrumptious. It turned out that the simplest dish of the evening ended up being the most elegant. By now our guests had so many questions for us and we were thrilled to answer them while delicately balancing trays full of glasses. In the end, there were a couple ice creams left and the whole team shared them. Single spoon. Yeah, we’re close.
Just when the diners thought it was all over, and were guiltily attempting to reinstate their gym memberships, Marta brought out the pièce de résistance. It was a rich layered cake made with our porter flour. The inherent flavor of chocolate and coffee naturally came through. A guest didn’t believe me when I told him that no, we hadn’t added any. The cake wasn’t light and fluffy. No, it was moist and flavor-packed to perfection. It was layered with dulce-de-leche, and topped with a simple cream cheese frosting that allowed the flavor of the cake to come through. The guests applauded when we introduced the chef for the first time. Marta spoke about her experience of working with our flour and how it shaped her reasoning for the menu. She explained the nutritious and sustainable nature of the flour, and urged the guests to try baking with our flour. She returned to a kitchen with a second round of applause, albeit a quieter one. People were already digging into the cake.
We thanked Greenpoint Beer and Ale Co. for giving us the space to host our dinner. To pay them back, we urged our diners to drink. A lot. We also strategically chose to give them free samples of the beer. Throughout the dinner, we paired the savory dishes with the Milk & Honey ale. We then paired the desserts with the English Porter. It blew people’s minds when they realized that the food they were eating was made from the same grain as their beers. Not the same type, but the actual same grain. In a way, they were consuming it twice. Even the guests who were initially hesitant about eating food made from a material that would otherwise have been thrown away, shed their inhibitions and readily embraced the concept. The dinner was a tremendous success and the feedback we received warmed our hearts. It was so great to see people sit down and share a meal where they could also experiment with the very definition of food. We wanted them to question what food can be, and what can be food. I believe that we achieved that small goal.
At the end of the night, we spoke about our goals and our motivations. We explained how we find it incredulous that in a country where 5o million people who go hungry each year, we throw away 60 million tons of food. Our guests learned that a huge part of that waste comes from breweries. Americans drink more than 200 million barrels of beer each year. What they don’t realize is that this industry produces more than 6 million tons of waste each year. Most of this waste is a nutritionally dense material that has unlimited potential as food for humans. Unfortunately, they end up in the landfill where they turn into greenhouse gases. This is a problem especially for urban breweries since, unlike for rural breweries, there are no farmers nearby to pick it up and use it as animal feed. This is we come in. We explained how we work with these breweries to turn them into zero-waste businesses. Our wonderful guests asked us about our process, about what we hope to achieve, and our next steps. We asked them to give us feedback by giving us quick 30-second reviews that we recorded on video. I don’t ever recall saying goodbye. The guests hung around after the dinner to chat with us and with each other. All of the flour was gone by the end of the night.
This event has inspired us to take the next step as a startup. What we had so far was a cool project. A cool idea. But now we want to turn that into a viable business. We really believe that a sustainable approach to growing, distributing and consuming food is the only way to feed the future. We need to start thinking beyond the supply chain, to what happens after we’ve used something. Does our trash have no value? Or are they just raw materials that we haven’t found uses for yet? In an era of squander and waste, we need to innovate the way we waste. There are many bakers and chefs out there who already source only organic, non-GMO and locally sourced ingredients. But what next? What comes after locally grown? How much more local can you get than using a flour that’s made in your own neighborhood. What’s more sustainable than turning food waste back into food? So let’s raise our glasses to eating, eating healthy, and eating sustainably.
