Editorial Note: When we go to a restaurant we usually do not go with the same feeling that we have when we go to the doctor. But why not? Why don’t we link nourishing our body with taking care of it and its health? The quick answer could be: because our society is not built that way. But this might change sooner than we expect, as innovators like Jaroslav Guzanic are connecting and building more and more bridges between professionals of different sectors. And the result of these newborn connections might completely revolutionize the way we think about food, medicine, and the people who work in those fields.

Q: Tell us about yourself.

*Jaroslav Guzanic, founder of The Kitchen Hub*

A: I am a chef and a hospitality professional, but also the founder of the Swiss Platform for Cooperation on Nutrition Education in the Hospitality-Industry (part of the Swiss Association for Cooperation on Swiss Education), Senior Member and a Co-Lead of Swiss Regional Network within a joint collaboration with the Global Centre for Nutrition and Public Health. I have been working and developing projects and programs focused on food education. Moreover, I strongly believe that cooking education can provide people with a sense of control over the ingredients, the preparation style, and the portion size, allowing them to actually see, feel and taste what nutrition is all about. Even though nutrition and culinary have two separate identities, they are now needed as one entity. My latest initiative is called The Kitchen Hub. It is a collaborative framework and a series of teaching kitchen modules where the kitchen environment is used for a sustainable food education for different stakeholders (disciplines) and age groups in a non-clinical and clinical setting. The main goal is to create and widen the cooperation within the area of lifestyle medicine between academics, chefs and other key professionals, and to create a new role of Global Culinary Practitioners that could serve as Ambassadors for sustainable change.

Q: What is your vision for a more sustainable world?

A: Working in hospitality for more than 20 years, I am seeing and experiencing different situations and examples of practice daily. The development of technology, current situations and demands (coming both from guests, consumers, communities and hospitality workforce) require to create not only more research and collecting new evidence, but an implementation of new models of education and training for different stakeholders in order to achieve SDG Agenda 2030 and to use the gained knowledge for understanding the current needs and being able to implement the above-mentioned solutions. In general, culinary arts is about a never-ending development, experimenting, learning, and sharing meaning that you always do new things and explore the global cuisines, traditions, cultures. But most importantly, seeing/meeting satisfied and happy guests and communities every day keeps me very motivated.

Q: What was your first step towards building a better world?

A: My first engagement with the world of social innovation and community-minded projects started with working for the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution Foundation between 2014-2015. I was always seeing chefs and the wider hospitality workforce as potential future leaders in linking food, cultures, education, and nutrition. This opened further networking opportunities for me and more collaboration options.

Q: What challenges did you face?

A: As with any project, making potential funders and sponsors believe that what you do has a future vision may be complicated, especially when talking about our experience. Secondly, the art of collaboration is sometimes an unexplored topic for many innovators. Very often, an innovator should think of and study more what the collaboration is about, and be open to making engaging cooperation links and work on key topics collectively instead of competing with each other. This is an unlimited space for creating and developing social projects. We need teamwork for a larger impact. The same philosophy applies to hospitality where, very often, unfortunately, teamwork does not have much value.

Q: How did you overcome your biggest challenge(s)?

A: Always being positive and trying, asking, and doing this all over and over again. I have received a lot of refusals, but gained a lot of experience from it and learned a lot of skills.

Q: What is your biggest achievement so far?

A: I had been working on this framework for about 2 years. I have understood that I would have to create a collaboration platform for all my previous, existing, and even future collaborators where we can create a dialogue, hack various topics and implement solutions. However, I was dealing with drafting a basic concept and making this project understandable for everyone while keeping it simple at the same time. I am very grateful and happy to be collaborating with the Global Centre for Nutrition and Public Health, which helped me to clarify a lot of points and shaped this idea to make it implementable for all networks on a global level.

Q: What keeps you moving forward?

A: The fact that there still are many motivated people doing wonderful things and making this world a better place. I am happy to be collaborating with some amazing innovators who have achieved a lot and who are always trying to give help to others in order to create important bridges.

Q: What are the biggest lessons you have learnt?

A: Being always patient and taking long-term decisions instead of reacting rapidly. This is, of course, sometimes very needed, but we are exploring quite still a new area, which needs more evidence. Therefore, doing additional research, brainstorming sessions, and letting others present their ideas and trying to understand their needs and goals is a key step to developing projects globally. Secondly, working in a smaller, but more productive team with people who really understand what they do is an important factor. And finally, never give up. Social innovation is about never-ending opportunities and pathways and everyone has a right to work on his own goals and vision and everyone should be fully respected.

Q: What’s next?

A: We have successfully established a new Swiss Regional Network and developed a sort of an Incubator Programme for future collaborators and we would be happy if we could keep up this great work and development with the Roxbourg Institute and align.

#Switzerland4Good Showcase
The Kitchen Hub website
The Kitchen Hub Instagram

Culinary art meets the global health and nutrition needs. A much-needed fusion that connects professionals from different types of backgrounds.