An Interview With Martita Mestey
Food waste is any food product that cannot be served to our guests, work family, or neighbors, donated, or turned into compost in our garden.
It has been estimated that each year, more than 100 billion pounds of food is wasted in the United States. That equates to more than $160 billion worth of food thrown away each year. At the same time, in many parts of the United States, there is a crisis caused by people having limited access to healthy & affordable food options. The waste of food is not only a waste of money and bad for the environment, but it is also making vulnerable populations even more vulnerable.
Authority Magazine started a new series called “How Restaurants, Grocery Stores, Supermarkets, Hospitality Companies and Food Companies Are Helping To Eliminate Food Waste.” In this interview series, we are talking to leaders and principals of Restaurants, Grocery Stores, Supermarkets, Hospitality Companies, Food Companies, and any business or nonprofit that is helping to eliminate food waste, about the initiatives they are taking to eliminate or reduce food waste.
As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ouita Michel.
Ouita Michel is a seven-time James Beard Foundation Award nominee, including nominations for Outstanding Restaurateur and Best Chef Southeast. Michel and her restaurants are regularly featured in local and national media, such as the New York Times, Southern Living, Garden & Gun, Food Network, and the Cooking Channel. She was a guest judge on Bravo’s Top Chef series. She lives in Midway, Kentucky, where she oversees her newest venture, Holly Hill, a lifestyle brand that celebrates farmers and agriculture, culinary traditions old and new, chefs and local talent and the bonds that unite them to cultivate a true sense of community.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Even when I was a teenager, I knew I wanted to open a restaurant someday. My mother was an artist and a poet. I grew up in a household full of art and literary friends, eating Mom’s made-from-scratch meals. She was a big believer in wholesome and nutritious food, and we still feature her Pam’s Grain Salad on our menus. I studied political science and was on the debate team at the University of Kentucky, where my dad taught in medical school. After college, I headed to New York City to enter the food scene and got a job at a macrobiotic restaurant. I decided to go to culinary school at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY and met my husband, Chris, there on the first day of class. Chris had grown up on Long Island and by the time we graduated, we were engaged. We knew that if we were going to open a restaurant, it would be in Kentucky. We wanted to bring new life to old Kentucky traditions. From the very outset written into our first business plan, we have differentiated ourselves by cooking what Kentucky farmers can grow. There can be no Kentucky cuisine without the Kentucky farmer. We have eight restaurants and an events business now in Central Kentucky, from casual to white tablecloth, but we’ve never changed our focus from Kentucky heritage, agriculture, art, and cuisine.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at your company or organization?
One magical evening at Holly Hill Inn, Ismail Merchant was our guest chef at a dinner to benefit Old Friends Thoroughbred Retirement Farm. I remember him teaching me how to crack coconuts, make chai, and then at two in the morning after all the guests were gone, swinging in the porch swing sipping a glass of wine. He wore the most beautiful red shoes. It was an amazing experience listening to his stories of filmmaking and cooking.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The first January after we had opened the Inn, we thought we’d close and take a rest. We learned in February what cash flow management really meant and even if it’s a trickle, cash needs to flow into the business.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
I try to lead from behind and support my management team as much as possible. Effective leadership is impossible without effective communication and a healthy dose of humble pie. I am willing to do any job in the restaurants and DO sometimes have to wash dishes, etc.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” — Eleanor Roosevelt I’ve always been a dreamer. If I can’t see it in my mind’s eye, I can’t do it.
OK, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Let’s begin with a basic definition of terms so that all of us are on the same page. What exactly are we talking about when we refer to food waste?
Food waste is any food product that cannot be served to our guests, work family, or neighbors, donated, or turned into compost in our garden.
Can you help articulate a few of the main causes of food waste?
At its most basic, food waste is a result of not treating food with the respect it deserves: an unrealistic or too rigid menu, over-dependence on commodity foodstuffs that can’t be repurposed or prepared creatively, lack of flexibility in ordering, careless treatment of food, overproduction in the kitchen, and over-serving guests to meet a particular price point. I hate to see food coming back on a plate to be thrown away. I’d rather guests start feeling comfortable asking for seconds! Buying and serving processed foods that have already generated considerable waste through their industrialized Production is another product of food waste. Catering clients who want to impress guests, often order too many dishes for an event in a display of hospitality. Food in these cases can become a prop, and it gets excessive.
What are a few of the obstacles that companies and organizations face when it comes to distributing extra or excess food? What can be done to overcome those barriers?
Lack of awareness, incentive, or concern are the main reasons organizations distribute excess food. We have to foster a culture that values food, and we have to develop our own ways of avoiding waste in the first place and reducing its impact when we can. Many companies are also worried about liability issues. If they donate or let food go home with staff and someone gets sick, are they liable?
Can you describe a few of the ways that you or your organization are helping to reduce food waste?
In all of our Holly Hill restaurants, we craft menus based on seasonally available ingredients and in such a way that ingredients can be used multiple ways in multiple dishes. We purchase as much local food as possible and commit to using everything we buy in its entirety (looking at you, stockpot!). Also, we’re so lucky to have David Wagoner and Grace Rogers, our farmer/aggregators, who work with farmers to aggregate our local food purchases and distribute the produce to all our restaurants, which saves on energy and labor costs. Because we’re buying locally-raised foods from farmers, we’ve grown to know we have an extra incentive to honor their hard work. Farmer Joe (Weber), Richard and Lee Ann Jones, and Patrick Kennedy are more than our suppliers, they’re our personal friends and customers. We train our staff to prepare everything from scratch and cook dishes to order so that nothing is overproduced. We compost everything we can. We grow many of our own vegetables, herbs, and decorative flowers. If we need chives or parsley, we can walk outside the kitchen door and harvest a handful at a time. When something unforeseen happens that prevents us from serving prepared food, we donate it to a local church or community center. Only our events business serves buffet-style, but we’ve got a great relationship with Lexington’s Hope Center just down the road, and we can exchange full hotel pans of food for empty ones. Finally, and I think this is really important in today’s industrialized food economy, by not buying and serving processed foods, we avoid contributing to the waste generated by their production methods, and we avoid contributing to their carbon footprint.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help address the root of this problem?
Encourage community gardening and small-scale food production by providing access to land and other resources (seeds, compost, mulch, community kitchen, etc.). This is much less wasteful and has the added advantage of a smaller adverse environmental impact, which is another issue that needs to be talked about. Support the work of organizations, such as FoodChain in Lexington, KY, which process extra food into nourishing snacks and meals. I was a founding member of FoodChain’s board of directors, and I’m still involved as an Emeritus Director. Formulate effective policies that facilitate donations to shelters and other social service centers while meeting sanitation and wholesomeness standards.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
Having a business structure where everyone knows and understands the role they play is very important. Rely on your own instincts and moral compass rather on perceived “experts”. Get the best help possible when solving complex problems and realize you can’t do it all on your own. Mistakes need not be fatal. A healthy approach to failure helps reduce anxiety and depression and makes you ready to get up and try it all again. It’s all about the journey. Don’t wait for others to recognize and endorse what you are doing as a reward.
Are there other leaders or organizations who have done good work to address food waste? Can you tell us what they have done? What specifically impresses you about their work? Perhaps we can reach out to them to include them in this series.
Foodchain’s founder, Becca Self, and longtime director of operations, Leandra Forman, as well as Nourish Lexington, The Hope Center, God’s Pantry, Edward Lee and the Lee Initiative, and the James Beard Foundation. FoodChain is such a multifaceted organization but on this specific issue, they’ve done an amazing job of teaching people how to turn less-than-perfect fruits and vegetables into nourishing meals and snacks for children and families community-wide. During the early days of the Covid pandemic, FoodChain and other entities came together to form Nourish Lexington, which utilizes unused food and unemployed food service workers, to address food insecurity at a very challenging time.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
FoodChain has inspired me in the way that their work has unequivocally demonstrated that people from all walks of life in all kinds of income levels want and need healthy, good-tasting food. AND that people like to coo, when they have access to that good food. I wish we could rethink our hunger relief programs around these principles. Working to make sure the food we give to those in need is the very best our community can deliver and offer instead of the last stop before disposal.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Michelle Obama — for her brilliance, her commitment to good food for all, to health, and to justice.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
A docuseries is in the works! Look for more on that soon but we also have a great new website where we’re telling all kinds of stories about our restaurant family, Kentucky food and farmers, art, and more. www.hollyhillandco.com.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much, and we wish you only continued success.
Reducing Food Waste: Ouita Michel Of Holly Hill On How They Are Helping To Eliminate Food Waste was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.