The Independent
During the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, the Italian chef Massimo Bottura and the chef and social entrepreneur David Hertz opened RefettoRio Gastromotiva, a pop-up kitchen in the city's Lapa district that turned surplus food from Olympic caterers and local businesses into free three-course dinners for homeless people. Visiting chefs from around the world took turns at the stoves, working alongside graduates of a Brazilian cooking school for people from the favelas. The project was planned to outlast the Games as a social restaurant.
The story spread widely online with a headline claiming 5,000 meals a day. As explained below, the best-sourced reports suggest a far smaller, but still meaningful, number. Here is what the project was, how it worked and why food waste makes it relevant years later.
The people behind RefettoRio Gastromotiva
Massimo Bottura runs Osteria Francescana in Modena, a three-Michelin-star restaurant named the world's best in the World's 50 Best Restaurants list in 2016. With his wife, Lara Gilmore, he founded the non-profit Food for Soul, which fights food waste and social isolation by opening community kitchens, called Refettorios, with local partners.
The model began in 2015, when Bottura worked with the Catholic charity Caritas Ambrosiana during Milan's Expo to turn an abandoned theatre on the city's outskirts into a soup kitchen. Rio was the next step. His partner in Rio, David Hertz, had founded Gastromotiva, a non-profit that trains people from poor communities in kitchen skills as a route into stable work.
Bottura framed the project as more than charity. He told the Michelin Guide: "This is not a charity project, but a cultural one." His argument was that cooking with "ugly" or nearly expired ingredients could change how people think about food itself.
How the kitchen worked
Dino Panato / Getty
The Refettorio was housed in a simple building of corrugated plastic on an empty lot in Lapa, a central neighbourhood known for its nightlife and its arches. Ingredients came from the catering operations serving Olympic venues and athletes, along with donations from other local businesses. The kitchens feeding the Games were preparing food for around 11,000 athletes, so the volume of leftovers was considerable.
The menu depended on what arrived each day. Italian reports described dishes such as aubergine parmigiana and a playful take on carbonara made with banana skins. Bottura summed up the shopping list as overripe bananas, ugly mangoes and milk close to its date. Hertz told Reuters the kitchen would use only ingredients about to be thrown away, adding: "We want to fight hunger and provide access to good food."
Chefs from Brazil and abroad rotated through the kitchen, but much of the work was done by Gastromotiva graduates. According to CNN, at least two people who first came to the Refettorio as guests were later hired to help in the kitchen.
Checking the numbers: 5,000 meals or 100?
Many 2016 articles, including one by The Local Italy, said around 5,000 meals a day were being prepared. That figure was then repeated across social media. Two well-sourced reports give a much smaller number for the homeless dinners themselves. CNN quoted Bottura saying the Refettorio was serving 100 meals a day to homeless guests, and the Michelin Guide likewise described about 100 three-course meals per day.
The likeliest explanation is that the larger number referred to wider food-rescue efforts or was a misreading, while the sit-down dinners in Lapa served roughly a hundred people each night. That smaller figure does not make the project less worthwhile. The aim was dignity as much as calories: guests were served at tables, with proper plates and courses, by chefs who would normally cook for paying diners.
Distractify.com
Why food waste matters
The project made headlines because of an uncomfortable contrast. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated in 2011 that roughly one third of food produced for people is lost or wasted, about 1.3 billion tonnes a year. A 2021 UN Environment Programme report put the waste at retail, food service and household level alone at around 931 million tonnes in 2019, or 17 percent of the food available to consumers; households accounted for most of it.
At the same time, hundreds of millions of people around the world go hungry. Brazil itself has struggled with food insecurity, and the Michelin Guide reported in 2016 that the food the country throws away could feed millions of hungry people. Big events such as the Olympics concentrate this problem: caterers must over-prepare to avoid running out, so large amounts of good food can end up in bins.
Rescuing surplus is not a full solution to hunger, which is driven by poverty, conflict and inequality. But it shows that waste and need often sit side by side in the same city, and that connecting them takes organisation, skill and goodwill.
What happened next
Bottura and Hertz intended the Refettorio to keep running for both the Olympics and the Paralympics, then carry on as a social business. CNN reported the plan: after the Games, paying customers would be served lunch at affordable prices, with that income funding free dinners for homeless guests, while Gastromotiva continued its vocational training for aspiring cooks, bakers and waiters.
Food for Soul has since worked with partners on community kitchens in several countries; Refettorios opened in Mérida and Lima in 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a Food for Soul fundraising campaign reportedly rescued more than 35 tonnes of surplus food in a month and delivered over 100,000 meals to vulnerable people and health workers.
Lessons for the rest of us
- Imperfect is not inedible. Bruised fruit, odd-shaped vegetables and food near its best-before date are often perfectly good. Plan meals around what needs using first.
- Large events need a surplus plan. Weddings, conferences and festivals can arrange in advance with food banks or rescue groups.
- Dignity matters. Serving people at a table, with care, is part of what made RefettoRio different from a handout.
- Training changes lives. Gastromotiva's model, teaching kitchen skills to people from poor communities, aims to tackle the causes of poverty as well as its symptoms.
RefettoRio Gastromotiva was a small kitchen in a plastic building, but it asked a large question: if good food is being thrown away while people go hungry a few streets away, who is responsible for closing that gap?
Sources: CNN, 19 August 2016: Feeding the poor in Rio; Michelin Guide, 15 August 2016; The Local Italy, 18 August 2016; Wikipedia: Massimo Bottura; Wikipedia: Food loss and waste. Photos credited to The Independent, Dino Panato / Getty and Distractify.com. Originally adapted from True Activist.
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