Since its start in 2012 Food Cabinet has been working on food and sustainability and a variety of subjects like food waste, responsible meat consumption and the promotion of healthy foods. Samuel Levie (founder of Food Cabinet) will talk mainly from his direct experience in working on projects and campaigns like Damn Food Waste, Big Bang Broccoli, Meat Less Mondays and Agri meets Design. He will share insights from the transitional work he is doing in The Netherlands from his background as a chef, entrepreneur and political scientist.

Food Cabinet is a project and campaign agency specialized in food and sustainability. In programs such as Agri meets Design it works on innovation in the agricultural system. Food Cabinet campaigns are mainly focussed on the promotion of healthy foods, like the campaign Power to the Pieper (Pieper = Potato in Dutch) and Big Bang Broccoli. Other campaigns include Damn Food Waste a campaign that was – among others – executed in collaboration with the British no-waste organisation Feedback.

Recent events organized by Food Cabinet have included KOST – an event about the Dutch eating culture – and World Food Day. Food Cabinet also supports organizations that try to improve the sustainability of their catering and has worked with several ministries and universities to introduce so called Meat Less Mondays. The Food Cabinet team consists of 10 full time employees with different backgrounds (i.e. nutrition, campaigning, biology and political sciences)

In 2008, Samuel started the Youth Food Movement, with the idea in mind that something had to change in the way we handle food. Soon afterwards, he started his own consultancy and catering agency called The Green Peas, that later turned into Food Cabinet. With two good friends, he started the sausage company Brandt & Levie. In 2012 he handed over his chairmanship of the Youth Food Movement, to be able to focus completely on Food Cabinet.

Samuel speaks at a range of events about food, trends and entrepreneurship, and is very involved in society. He is columnist for Jamie Magazine and the newspaper Het Parool. In 2010 Samuel was named Social Entrepreneur of the year, and in 2012 he became Food Trendwatcher of the year. Samuel studied Political Science at the University of Amsterdam and graduated on paradigms in food policy.

After the talk, Samuel is joined by his colleague Sebastiaan Aalst for a Q&A session. Sebastiaan studied Political Science at the University of Amsterdam and has worked as a consultant for various consultancy agencies in The Netherlands, before joining Food Cabinet in 2012. Sebastiaan has a special interest in food policy and has been involved in the development of the first Vision on Food and the City that was published in 2013 by the municipality of Amsterdam.