Tim Ma, chef/owner at Kyirisan, is combining his talents in food and tech by participating in an inaugural campaign to stop wasting food.
The former engineer and Raytheon employee will track purchasing and composting practices at his Asian-French fusion restaurant as part of BlueCart’s Zero Waste Kitchen initiative. Two other U.S. chefs — one in NYC and another in San Francisco — will also open up their kitchens as part of the eight-week project, which kicks off Monday.
Ma, who has a whole fried fish, duck confit, and pan seared scallops on the menu at the moment, says he likes the fact that the program is scientific and provides a “data-driven analysis” of the inventory.
BlueCart, founded in D.C. in 2014 , specializes in online software that helps the hospitality world improve the wholesale process between buyers and suppliers via Just-in-Time ordering to trim inventory and reduce waste.
While using BlueCart, chefs will reveal information about food recovery, product sourcing, kitchen culture, tech in restaurants, and time management via personal interviews, videos and blogs. Live data updates are posted here.
The project culminates in a live three-day Twitter interview moderated by Food+TechConnect on April 24. The overall goal is to create a go-to chef playbook to prevent food waste from ever hitting the trash.
The other participants include Jehangir Mehta, chef/owner of Graffiti Food & Wine Bar in New York City and former runner up on “The Next Iron Chef,” and Tanya Holland, who is all about soul food at her Brown Sugar Kitchen in San Francisco.
Each chef’s progress will be tracked via an aggregate “Sustainability Score” derived from the size of each competitor’s carbon footprint, as well as the design and implementation of new food waste mitigation strategies.
Ma is freshly inspired to take on the challenge; he says he just came back from his first trip to South by Southwest.