Roots Radicals – Delicious taste without waste

In 2019 Monica Kisic founded ROOTS RADICALS, a sustainable food company, with the mission to fight back against the staggering amount of food waste. It is around this mission that the ROOTS team organically emerged. Utilizing an innovative circular cooking concept that places upcycling at its heart, ROOTS RADICALS offers zero-waste preserves that narrate histories and evoke memories while bringing delightful flavors to your kitchen table.

From production to shipping, ROOTS aims to not only reduce waste, but to reimagine it as a fertile source of inspiration and raw material. Upcycling, Innovation, Preservation, and Education —the four pillars of Roots Radicals—are the principles with which we guide our vision of circular and conscious consumption.

1. Upcycling: All of our preserves are made from 40-90% rescued materials which are usually thrown away. These are then transformed into delicious new creations. .

2. Innovation: We find new ways to reuse and repurpose by-products. These may be ingredients like cauliflower leaves, apple cores and peels which are then transformed into unique delicacies like kimchi, vinegars and spices.

3. Food Preservation: Ancient fermentation and pickling techniques allow us to extend the life of fresh produce.

4. Education & Transparency: At community dinners, workshops and consultancies for professionals, we cook with rescued food, bringing the topic of waste directly to the table.

Our goal is to have a collective, powerful influence in the sustainable transformation of our food system.

That’s why our project is for everyone who wants to work together for a fair food system - from the sustainably minded to the sustainably curious. We want to reach people who are looking for exceptional taste experiences and also think about the impact of the production of our food on our planet.

With our small scale operations, over the year 2020, we sold up to 2500 products, preventing over 1000 kg of food waste or 2.5 tonnes of carbon emissions. Within the first 6 months of 2021, our community helped us prevent 4 tonnes of carbon emissions. As our operations scale, so does our impact!

Unfortunately we reached the limit of capacity in our small shared kitchen … but we haven't reached our goal! ROOTS wants to inspire and empower people to transform the food system. In order to reach a larger community with our waste free products and education opportunities, we want to operate our own, well equipped production kitchen and workshop space. The possibility of building this powerful community is around the ROOTS corner, we invite you to take part and help this project have a large scale impact.

Together, let's taste the necessary change and do something that works!

The time for change is now. Many people realise we are all in the same boat. Every day, we see great potential in our little circular kitchen to become a big part of the food system transformation. With your support, we can turn our dream of having our own production kitchen and workshop space into a reality. You will also enable us to grow our reach of influence, giving more people access to our food experiences and education opportunities.

If you:

• Are a fan of delicious food products
• Support our circular cooking concept and zero waste values
• Seek to combat food waste by learning about how to upcycle food
• Want to help make Berlin an environment that enables sustainable projects
• Believe that together, we can be the change

Then you can support our campaign and choose one of the rewards! Let’s celebrate the success of our campaign together in one of our workshops or community dinners.

To get started with our next steps, we need you! Making an impact is not something you do alone.

With €15,000, we can:
Improve our process and buy equipment that supports our team in increasing production capacity.
Make more products ready for the market and bring them to your table.

Even better, with 30,000 we can:
Start looking for our own location for the ROOTS RADICALS production kitchen and educational community space.

Our next goal is to reach 40,000, with which we can launch our upcoming digital education platform with 3 extensive courses about food upcycling, preservation and more. We want to build it together with you, so let us know your suggestions!

Let’s see how far we get :) We are sure that with your help we can do it!