Resty

Doreen Westphal

Designer Doreen Westphal and entrepreneur Ruud Zanders are turning vegetable waste from Dutch farmers into pure and healthy food. Operating under the name Resty, they process rejected mushroom stalks and misshapen tomatoes into delicious plant-based burgers and sausages.

Every year, Dutch oyster mushroom cultivation produces 300 tonnes of food waste. We also locally grow the king mushroom, an expensive delicacy, which generates another 22,000 kilos waste annually. Additionally, at least 10,000 kilos of tomatoes are rejected weekly in the Netherlands. These waste streams often end up in the animal feed industry, despite being perfectly edible, tasty and nutritious for people.

We spoke with Doreen about her ambition to reduce this waste at the beginning of the food chain and how she uses her sense of humour to promote plant-based food.

Text: Lisa Hardon

Photography: Anouk Moerman

Hi Doreen, what is driving you as a designer? What is your passion and where does it come from?

My passion began with a love of making things. My head is always full of ideas and I like nothing better than to find out how to bring them to life. I grew up in East Germany and in my youth it was quite normal to use everything, so we had very little waste. For example, I would make rubber bands for my mother from old inner tubes. Not because we were poor, but because it was still good material.

After moving to the West following the fall of the Berlin Wall, I discovered a world full of abundance.

I wanted to become a designer and maker, so I studied tailoring and set building. I later started a design studio combining different disciplines. Once while visiting a leather factory, I noticed half hides lying around unused. This inspired me to create bags made 100% from waste leather. While these bags were a great success, I realized that most of my customers didn't need a bag, rather they bought it because they liked it. It was then that I began to understand that despite my good intentions, my studio was contributing to creating abundance and overconsumption.

This realization led to a turning point: instead of making new products, I decided to focus on developing new skills and techniques that would give me insight into a sustainable and self-sufficient life. I started experimenting with making sourdough bread and growing my own crops, including mushrooms. That's how I discovered how many edible parts are thrown away at the beginning of the food chain. This motivated me to find solutions for repurposing these residual streams.

You work with food waste. What exactly is the current issue in the food industry?

In 2017, I discovered that the stalks of oyster mushrooms end up discarded before consumption because many find them chewier than the rest of the fungus. But there is no difference to their taste or nutritional value. The same goes for tomatoes that are too large, too small, or not the ‘right’ colour. This results in a huge amount of food waste at the beginning of the food chain. We may call it waste, but in reality, it’s still valuable food.

Every year, this amounts to a residual flow of 300 tonnes of oyster mushroom stalks in the Netherlands. We also locally grow the king mushroom, an expensive delicacy used mainly by top chefs, which generates another 22,000 kilos of waste annually. Additionally, numbers as high as 10,000 kilos of tomatoes are rejected weekly. This waste is sometimes made into animal feed, but otherwise has no function. This is a shame because animal feed can also be made from ingredients that are not suitable for human consumption, such as certain types of cereals.

After moving to the West, I discovered a world full of abundance.

What did you decide to make with those stalks of oyster mushrooms and unused tomatoes?

I saw so much potential to make better use of these residual streams and to reduce waste that I decided to join an Agri Meets Design speed-date event. This is an initiative that connects designers with farmers to develop new solutions. Through this event, I met Mariëlle van Lieshout, a farmer from Brabant who had a surplus of oyster mushroom stalks. We were allocated a budget to explore different ideas and that's how the ball started rolling.

Since then, I’ve increasingly focused on using waste streams at the start of the chain to create high-quality additional applications. I see my role as a partner to farmers, taking a fresh look at their residual streams and helping them turn these into valuable assets. Originally named Botanic Bites, the company has since developed considerably, with Ruud Zanders joining as a partner to assist with business operations. Our company is now called Resty.

Resty is committed to turning vegetable waste from Dutch farmers into delicious and healthy food. We process mushroom stalks and misshapen tomatoes into 100% plant-based burgers and sausages. Our product range includes the Fungi burger, Fungi bratwurst, Fungi kebab and the Tomato burger.

You make 100% plant-based products made from vegetable waste. Are they tasty?

Yes! Taste is a top priority for us. Our products are 100% plant-based and healthy, but the most important factor is flavor.

We believe that our products should be delicious without relying on labels like 'vegan' or 'vegetarian'. These labels can come off as preachy to some people, and we don’t believe in persuasion by guilt or judgement. Instead, we focus on creating a standalone product made from vegetables that would otherwise be thrown away.

We want to stand out from the conventional offerings of meat substitutes, where artificial 'meat flavours' are often used to replicate the taste of meat as closely as possible. Instead, we prioritize making a product in which the main ingredient shines. Our products have minimal ingredients and focus on purity, honesty and flavor. For example, our kebab contains only sliced oyster mushroom stalks and herbs.

So how do you reach people with such a sustainable message, without being pedantic?

Besides flavor, humour is an important tool for me to connect with people. For example, I conducted research showing that you can produce fifteen times more vegetable proteins than animal proteins on the same piece of land. To make this idea more tangible, I created plant-based sausages that were fifteen times longer than regular sausages. People shared these sausages together which encouraged them to connect and by addressing this in a light-hearted, humorous way, I am able to create awareness without preaching.

So tasty and healthy products with a wink. What is the main message you want to get across with this?

First of all, I want to show how delicious healthy food is. Our products are completely plant-based, containing 55% vegetable waste and even 98% in our kebab. I want to entice people to discover more sustainable, plant-based options and to enjoy what is now often considered waste.

In addition, my message is also about critical reflection on the current design of our food system and how we perceive food. Who gets to decide when a tomato is 'misshapen', or 'waste'? And why is this food not considered suitable for consumption?

Can we already buy your products in shops?

Yes, Resty is now for sale through Instock, a sustainable wholesaler for the hospitality industry. Through this channel, caterers buy our products and they’re served at events from companies like Booking.com and Wetransfer.

We also regularly attend festivals with our own Resty food truck, because we enjoy being in direct contact with our customers. This allows us to get immediate feedback and a feel for how our products are received.

Who gets to decide when a tomato is 'misshapen', or 'waste'?

In what ways do you yourself think about production waste with your products?

For a long time, I tried to do everything 100% perfect and sustainable, but I discovered that this often doesn't get you anywhere. Plastic, particularly in food packaging, is difficult to eliminate due to strict food safety regulations. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I cannot do it all, although I try to minimize our use of plastic where we can, and hope that the packaging industry will develop better alternatives.

While eliminating plastic completely has proven challenging, we have found a creative solution to reduce plastic use in one area: the production of our ‘sausages,' specifically the Fungi frikandel and bratwurst. To make a 'sausage,' you cook the ingredient mixture in hot water. Initially, you place it in a plastic casing, which is then removed. I felt that this was a waste of plastic and began searching for an alternative, which, interestingly, I found in the 'regular' snack industry.

We’ve now adapted a machine traditionally used to produce meat fricandells. This presses the sausages together in a tube without using plastic, and then they fall into the water. This significantly reduces waste.

You already mentioned packaging materials. So what are other dilemmas for you?

The biggest dilemma I face is maintaining focus within my work. As a designer, I constantly have new ideas and impulses, especially when I see something inspiring, such as a new residual stream. This creative process can divert my attention from the focus needed to run a startup, and ensure our current products’ success. Finding the balance between designer and entrepreneur can be challenging, but that’s why I have Ruud on board, who is great at keeping an eye on the commercial side.

Another dilemma is scaling up. To make a greater impact, we want to sell more products. Supermarkets are important players in this, but it’s a complex world where speed and volume are crucial. While there’s more and more shelf space in the vegetable section, supermarkets decide which products stay based on sales figures. If consumers don't buy enough, products are quickly removed from the shelves. So we need to deliver consistent volume and sell well.

We regularly sample our products at supermarkets, allowing us to get to know them better. Back in the days of Botanic Bites, we were even on sale at Lidl a few times during special action weeks. We sold 30,000 burgers in a week! That was a success, and they know us now, so hopefully a new collaboration will come out of that.

How do you envision the future and what will it take to get there?

As I mentioned earlier: I see myself as a partner of the farmer. In addition to high-quality applications of residual flows, I’m also thinking about ways to shorten the chain from farmer to customer. In addition to my work for Resty, I’m working on a project to investigate how we can deliver food products to consumers as directly as possible.

An important link in this is the cold chain. The products I make currently need to be transported under refrigeration. For instance, during the pandemic, I personally delivered barbecue packages across the country. But delivering refrigerated packages proved to be too expensive and inefficient, especially when people were not at home and packages had to be returned to the cold store. I want to overcome these logistical and financial hurdles.

That’s why I am now working on an innovative solution centered around drying. In this process, water is extracted from the product, reducing its size and preventing bacterial growth. This allows products to keep for up to 25 years at room temperature. Moreover, 97% of the nutritional value is retained and it’s easy to prepare at home. This opens up the possibility of delivering products directly and compactly to the consumer, without depending on expensive refrigeration systems.

To make this vision a reality, I’m launching a crowdfunding campaign to produce king mushroom mince that can be delivered in small packages through the letterbox. At home, people can easily prepare it by soaking it in water for half an hour, and seasoning it with one of the three spice mixes provided. We will dry a total of 1,000 kilos of king mushroom residue in collaboration with a specialised factory. I'm calling this the Fungi Hack Crowdfunding and people can order a package from our webshop, which will be delivered to their homes once we have processed the 1,000 kilos.

So our readers can support your crowdfunding campaign. What else would you like to share with them?

What I want to convey is that plant-based food is delicious, healthy and easy. And through my work, I also want to encourage a different perspective on food production. I hope to inspire people to think: Where does my food come from? Why does it look the way it does? And as a result, to make informed choices.

Let's all be creative, work together, and use humour and innovation to contribute to a more sustainable system. I think it’s important to consider, together with farmers and consumers, how we can simplify the food chain. When consumers have a better understanding of how produce is grown, they can develop a more empowered perspective on 'waste.'

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Resty

Doreen Westphal

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