Daniel McBurnie, Lyst

To what extent are the chefs involved in exploring the indigenous foodways and ingredients of your region; what efforts are being made to increase the proportion of locally produced food and drink? 

We work with it a lot. It can be anything from foresting to our biodynamic farm, with which we work closely. We also make all our juices, mostly from by-products from excess food in the kitchen, and create our kombucha. We make our Lyst beer, which is made in our town. We make our wine too on the Solaris grape, which is excellent. We were fortunate to borrow some fields in Fyn to harvest our grapes and make our wines. We also have some local wines from nearby. Moreover, we have made some gin at one point from wild junipers but not many other spirits.

How do you go public with your commitments in the policy, and how is it communicated to your employees?

We have our water company, where we get all the water from nearby. That is something we want to communicate outwardly. Only some things are on the website since it’s constantly changing, so we communicate it on social media. We have a lot of meetings where we go through all the different processes. We work with it daily, and since we don’t have a high staff turnover, it’s in everyone’s backbone. When we get someone new on board, we take them on a course to teach them how and what we work towards. We also have workshops a couple of times a year when we bring in experts who can educate us.