Working with Triodos Bank
Taste the future!
At the beginning of 2023, we launched the Vermaat Food Vision 2027 with ambitious goals on three pillars: People, Product, and Planet. For the Product pillar, we interview Mychel Jansen, catering manager at Triodos.
Mychel Jansen is catering manager at Triodos Bank. He serves 100% organic and predominantly plant-based food. Together with Triodos, his team, and of course the guests, he never shies away from a challenge to make his restaurant even more sustainable. “We never stop learning.”
To get straight to the point: what is the best collaboration here at Triodos?"
Triodos’ new office was built on the Reehorst Estate. The Lievegoed Foundation is also located here, an organization dedicated to supporting people with a distance to the labor market. Together with them, we have a piece of farmland where we grow our own vegetables. We truly collaborate with nature, source our products hyper locally, and give 15 hard workers an extra helping hand.
The restaurant serves predominantly vegetarian meals. How do you keep everybody happy?
Over 40% of what we offer is plant-based, and the vast majority is vegetarian. We do not focus on meat or fish but on flavor. You can emphasize flavor with herbs, and by displaying the herbs, dishes are even more appealing! The more attractive and colorful your buffet is, the less people will notice that there is no meat and fish.
Your products are 100% organic and you put a lot of thought into sourcing locally. How do you deal with food waste?
We have various ways to combat food waste. We work with a large team during lunch, so we have the capacity to make extra portions halfway through. This way, we can better adjust the quantities to the number of guests. We use ingredients from nose to tail. For instance, we roast the cauliflower leaves. Did you know that the leaves contain up to ten times more nutrients than the cauliflower itself?
What does the future of food and beverages look like to you?
We need to make more balanced choices and adopt a new eating pattern. My grandfather was a butcher, so my father was used to eating meat every day. That was not at all common at the time. Now, you can buy everything every day at the supermarket for a much lower price. I think we need to go back to the time when it was not available. A time where meat and fish are luxury products and not something you can have daily. If everyone got their meat from the butcher, their fish from the fishmonger, and bread from the baker, it would no longer be as convenient as it is now. I think a lot would change.
The video below shows how we, together with Triodos Bank on the Reehorst Estate, shape our partnership and achieve our goals.
The strength of working together
Triodos Bank and Mychel Jansen are leading innovators in the fields of sustainability, health, and social impact. "We never stop learning," as Mychel aptly stated in the introduction. A valuable collaboration that has been instrumental in the creation of the Product pillar of the Vermaat Food Vision 2027, which is depicted below the video.
