PIONEERS OF HONG KONG HOSPITALITY REAP REWARDS

By Belinda Ng, Food Made Good Hong Kong

An environmentally friendly ‘coffee laundry’ and a food hall on a mission to remove all single-use packaging were among the winners at the third Food Made Good Hong Kong Awards.

The ten award categories at the event to celebrate the most outstanding efforts and best practices of sustainability within the F&B industry, are based on Food Made Good HK’s three pillars of sustainability: Sourcing, Environment, and Society.

Aside from celebrating the achievements of the winners and finalists, the evening, sponsored by Henderson Land Group, brought together a diverse and sustainability-oriented community of professionals. 

Keynote speaker Alistair Monument, Conservation Impact Director, Asia Pacific, WWF, inspired guests saying: “There is hope, food has finally moved up the agenda at COP27.”

To provide guests with a taste of food of the future, six chefs participating in the global One Planet Plate campaign presented by HSBC, introduced their dishes embodying the sustainability ethos of one or more of the following categories: Celebrate Local, Feature More Veg, Low Carbon Footprint, Source Seafood Sustainably, and Waste No Food. 

Two teams of press hour attendees competed with each other to correctly guess the specific sustainability ethos behind each One Planet Plate dish. After a competitive few rounds, the winning team walked away with a prize from COCO at The Mira Hong Kong.

Guests also savoured a range of sustainable planet-first canapés from Uma Nota; Spicebox Organics; the Grand Cafe Kitchen, Grand Hyatt Hong Kong; Cuisine Cuisine, The Mira Hong Kong; Amber, The Landmark Mandarin Oriental; Mandarin Grill + Bar, Mandarin Oriental and Mono. And drinks provided by our sponsors Ruinart, Château Galoupet, Lillet, Cedars, Jacobs Creek Wine, Fever-Tree, Chivas Regal, Young Masters, and Innocent drinks. 

Richard Ekkebus, Heidi Yu Spurrell, Sheldon Fonseca, Punam Chopra, Gustavo Enrique Vargas Mora, Ricardo Chaneton.

In his keynote speech, Alistair Monument, reminded guests about the importance of promoting planet-based diets that are both good for people and the planet, and recognised the important efforts of those in the room in contributing towards creating more sustainable and resilient food systems.

The Open Right Award sponsored by Fresh Accounting made its debut as a category this year, highlighting restaurants adapted to be more sustainable to remain in business. With the increase in takeaway service during the pandemic, category Award winner KIN Food Hall is working towards achieving the ambitious target of “eliminating all packaging and replacing it with circular packaging by 2025”. 

For Cynthia Lok, the Founder and Director of Clean Sustainable Coffee & Laundry, winning the Society award came as a huge surprise. “I’m really shocked,” she said as she collected the award. “It is a real honour for a small business like us to be a finalist in the same category alongside hotels like the Landmark Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong and Grand Hyatt Hong Kong.” The Society Award is given to a Food Made Good Hong Kong member that has demonstrated social responsibility for their staff, customers, and the wider community as a progressive business.

And the winners were…

One Planet Plate Award: Aulis HK 

Sourcing Award: TABLE by Sandy Keung

Good to Go Award: Mott32 

Open Right Award: KIN Food Hall 

Innovation Award: Breer 

People’s Choice Award: Treehouse

Supplier Award: Nordaq 

Environment Award: Zoku Restaurant & The Terrace, The Hari Hong Kong

Society Award: Clean Sustainable Coffee & Laundry

Business of the Year Award: Amber,The Landmark Mandarin Oriental 

Sustainable Event Planning

And finally to give a big thank you to our hosts at the Mira who supported us for a second year and also ensured we kept our footprint to a minimum. Some of the ways we did that included:

• All drinks and products were supplied by Members, plus one local business. 
• The food was 65% vegan and vegetarian
• We didn’t provide lanyards and checked in with reusable magnet badges
• We kept signage to a minimum (one card based printed backdrop) and we sent out our press releases in digital format only