#14 Douglas McMaster: ‘Bullying, Violence, Food waste – I saw it all in Michelin Star kitchens’

0:00Douglas McMaster:I looked around the world at restaurants that were thinking differently and I went to them. Whether that was in England, the Fat Duck, whether that was in Copenhagen, Noma. I'm going to go around the world and I'm going to go on this pilgrimage to all these places that are thinking differently. Because thinking differently now at St. John's is making me feel more whole. I was tapped into this mainstream consciousness that made me feel empty. And now I'm like feeling something. I'm starting to feel alive for the first time.

0:29welcome to the slowdown your time to define success and growth for yourself with a little inspiration from others this week we're back at brazen studios with chef and restaurateur douglas mcmaster i'm always interested in hearing from people in different industries and what is a more fast-paced physically grueling and emotionally battering world than that of the high-end Michelin star kitchens. Douglas is the owner of Silo, the world's first zero-waste restaurant based in Hackney. He is a true trailblazer and I hope you find this conversation as enlightening and enlivening as I did.

1:08I was traveling to Bucharest for my TEDx and I realized as I got there that I'd forgotten my passport and I ended up having to sort of fall crumble into a crying mess at the BA counter and there was no flight that day but they were like we'll get you on the flight first thing in the morning you don't have to pay for a flight change I had to go all the way back home to collect my passport to then go all the way back to the airport to fly again but I'd missed sound check dress rehearsal any kind of practice time that I could have possibly had so my first time ever out on any kind of stage to give any kind of public speaking was my TEDx in Bucharest in front of 1 ,200 people.

1:51And the person who went just before me was this incredible guy who had lost his leg to cancer and now works for Airbus in France and basically creates prosthesis for kids in developing countries who've lost their limbs. And I'm like, I'm talking about nothing in comparison to what this guy is talking about. So it was an interesting experience.

2:17Douglas McMaster:Yeah, right. But not as good as yours. Well, yeah. For context, you were saying that your TEDx, you went to Vilnius and recorded the whole thing. And then at the end, they said something was wrong with the cameras. We need you to, there was no audio. We need you to actually, after everybody is gone and you have no audience reaction, re-record your entire talk. Even worse, they were like, sorry, you've lost it. But I'd spent six months writing the script, thinking about it deeply, which I'd like to come back to that as one of the best things I've ever done for a lot of big reasons, including being on this podcast, being able to articulate something clearly.

2:58Douglas McMaster:however uh yeah i'd been working on this uh ted talk for yeah six months and then flown to vilness took a week off of work which when you run your business on your own that's a huge thing to commit to and then they told me sorry it's all for nothing i was like no chance there's absolutely no chance i'm leaving this auditorium unless we refilm it and like get the audio and you can drop in those visuals of the crowd or whatever and they were like no sorry we can't do it and i said I'm not leaving until you re-record me saying that exact same thing on that stage. So I insisted that they would re-record it.

3:38Douglas McMaster:And I then stood in front of zero, well, maybe like seven people rather than 700 people, the same spiel. And there was no like timer in it. So yeah, there was a lot of things that I'm frustrated about when I watched that. Or not that I watch it anymore because it's too frustrating. But yeah, it was a bit of a disaster. But to go back to the more interesting kind of bigger point is, and I'm hoping that you might agree, is I remember the beginning of writing that script having just dribble, just so many pages of dribble. And I wanted to say everything. And I was so passionate about all these different pockets that were seemingly unconnected.

4:14Douglas McMaster:And then, you know, you have 18 minutes. So you just distill and distill and distill and distill and distill down to exactly what feels right. and the most crystal clear version of how you feel about the said subject. And my dad was a poet and he would always say, and this is my favourite thing that he said, he said, if only I had time to say less. And so, yeah, it always stuck with me and that process of writing a TEDx talk distilled a million words into a few thousand. and those sentences are like inscribed into my brain and there are hundreds of sentences that have been built from that talk you know many more talks or whatever that are just like galvanized into my my brain and then when I'm in a scenario I might be in the pub might be wherever somebody talks about a certain subject that my mind will associate with one of those sentences or a paragraph of those sentences and it just flies out perfectly formed speech paragraph and that as a communicator which is a very important role in my case operating a zero waste restaurant you need to be able to communicate that very well very quickly very clearly in its complex subjects you need to distill it into something that you understand that people understand so that was an amazing process of distillation language and you know to yourself as much as to everyone else i found the same process yeah and as a storyteller i really wanted there to be a beginning middle and end and themes and tropes and something that carried as a thread line through the story because for me it was also i mean you've done so much but for me i was 29 i literally when they asked me to do it i said what do you want me to talk about like i I don't feel like I've reached that point in my career in advertising where I can say, this is how we change advertising or some kind of very TED thing.

6:17I said, I literally only have the anecdotal stories of my life and I'm still on that journey. And they were like, great. Yeah, like distilling that into something that felt like an interesting takeaway, which is the TED point, was very much an interesting challenge. And I do. Yeah, those sentences live rent free in my mind. and I pull them out at totally different times and different paragraphs have become different workshops, have become different threads of ideas, have become all sorts of different things. And this podcast is very much the evolution of that TEDx that I did in 2019.

6:51Douglas McMaster:And post your TED talk, is it giving you confidence to, do you intuit a feeling in your chest that's like, this is a feeling I want to express verbally? have you ever fluffed a public presentation you know whether it's big or small have you ever like that was a disaster getting into flow state which something hopefully we can talk about happens quite regularly because you've got this relationship between mastery of a subject you know hopefully we're talking about the things that we're experts of yes and the high stakes of the scenario you know is this beautiful combination that puts us into flow and so most of the talks are great because you do get into flow but then there's been some absolute shockers in my personal experience some absolute shockers that crush you this wave of pressure and I once spoke in front of a thousand people and the audio was really bad and no one could hear me and as I was speaking I could hear the the waves of the audience just start to get louder and louder and louder as they talked among themselves as they started and it got louder and i just i just crumbled into dust and just internally there was just nothing left i was so so distraught i just wanted to go home and cry myself to sleep it was so bad and that's probably happened about 10 times for me because i'm so nervous about them and i've had like under 10 large public speaking engagements to over a thousand people.

8:19So like under 10. So I overprepare. That was my default with the TED and with every other large speaking thing I've done. I overprepare so much because I think I listened to some YouTube video that was like 200 hours. It's 10 hours per minute or whatever it is for a 20 minute talk, 200 hours. And if you really do practice it that much, it reaches a point where you just know it back to front, upside down. You could start at any point and you'd be fine. And the comfort in knowing that is so reassuring. And when I went out on that TEDx stage, what's crazy is that my brain was talking to me in overdrive.

8:58It was like, don't mess this up. Okay, this is where you stand. This is what you need to do. This is what you're thinking about. Know that it's this long. That's where the counter is. And my mouth was talking. I was already two minutes into my speech and my brain and my mouth were not at the same place. I was talking to myself and listening to myself talk in my head whilst giving my speech so if i didn't know it i would have been messed up but what then happened was after about five minutes my my brain and my body eventually caught up to each other and i was present and in the moment and speaking to people and very much that eye contact was key if i'm speaking in a room of people and there's

9:37Douglas McMaster:somebody that intimidates me in that room and if I get if I get in my own head if the neurosis begins emerges because of the intimidating force in the room game over game over it could just be one person that I'm then on stage thinking about what they're thinking about what I'm saying as I'm saying it game over can't do a good speech takes you out of presence yeah well we've obviously massively digressed which is totally fine yeah but i just wanted to say hi douglas hello it's a real joy to have you here in the studio really chuffed to be here you are a pioneering british chef renowned for championing sustainable dining your culinary journey includes 10 years at esteemed establishments such as saint john which is my one of my favorite restaurants of my partner the fat duck and noma in 2014 you created silo the world's first zero waste restaurant initially established in brighton and later relocated to london's hackney wick silo operates on a pre-industrial food system utilizing techniques like fermentation pickling and preservation to ensure every ingredient is fully utilized your innovative approach has earned silo accolades such as Britain's most ethical restaurant and Britain's most innovative restaurant.

10:56Beyond the Kitchen, you share philosophy through public speaking, including the TEDx we just talked about, which was called Waste is a Failure of Our Imagination, and contribute as a faculty member at the MAD Academy, a global food community inspiring the future culinary leaders to rethink systems and sustainability. It's so impressive what you've done, and I'm so excited. Where did this all start? because I'm really curious about context and where people's journeys begin. And I think it's kind of integral to understand and know a person. So where were you raised, by whom, and what were your earliest memories that made an impression on you?

11:35Douglas McMaster:To explain how I came to open a restaurant that doesn't have a bin, it would be an unclear story to say that it started in kitchens because it definitely started from childhood. I spent a lot of time thinking about psychology and understanding how motivations from childhood are so essential to climbing a mountain that is innovating silo. Not having a bin in this current world is a very challenging project and I have a good degree of rigor and hard work in me to kind of commit to a very, very challenging project. And that comes, I think, from witnessing my parents were sort of working class northern town in which we didn't have a lot of money, didn't have sort of electricity until I was 12.

12:34Douglas McMaster:And my mum worked extremely hard, was maybe quite absent in a lot of my childhood. And sometimes when a parent is absent, the child thinks that they've done something wrong. And there is this innate sense of not being full, not being good enough. You know, that is basic child psychology. There was a lack of physical attention, physical affection because they were surviving. They were in survival mode. I loved my parents so much and wouldn't change anything for the world. But there was an absence and that has had a significant implication on me as an individual, this feeling, the innate feeling.

13:19Douglas McMaster:As much as I can be cognizant of this truth, it's still there. And that is that I feel like I'm not good enough or something's not right. Base experience, there's something unsafe about existing. And that is deep, deep sort of rooted psychology and childhood dynamics. And that, you know, sounds terrible. And it is, I guess, tough. So it's also fuel. It's fuel, yeah. And this is why I will proudly speak about this and understanding the fundamental challenges of innovating in this world. You have to be so dedicated. And that dedication can come from this innate desire to succeed and to fulfill an objective.

14:09Douglas McMaster:So when I went to school, I was never recognized as neurodivergent. So I've never actually been diagnosed as ADHD or having dyslexia or dyscalculia and so on. But I definitely relate to almost all of those, including OCD and, you know, basically everything within that sphere of what we consider neurodivergent. And that was never recognized in school. So it kind of this feeling of not being enough was exacerbated in a decade of being in school and terrified every day. I was terrified of the teacher asking what is simultaneous equations or what is 2 plus 28 divided by 6. I was terrified of every class.

14:57Douglas McMaster:And I would wear clothing that would make me less obvious, the most basic kind of expressions. I was basically trying to be invisible because I was afraid of that attention. and when every single day you feel like a failure that builds a real kind of complex of you know low self-esteem so that's sort of uh was childhood suffered every day feeling that i wasn't worthy i wasn't good enough i was dumb and so that is fuel as you say and that that is incredibly notable in terms of how I got to the introduction that you've given me that's the fuel and that's important to point out and I definitely definitely wouldn't have achieved the the nice things that you've you've you've listed there if it was not for that fuel and there's just a bunch of great ideas that that fuel has powered forward but that's sort of how uh I see the the successes that I have have had um with this tinge of they come from a place of unworthiness exactly and kitchens seem like an interesting space for a young person like that because they're physical you're not reliant on having to be incredibly academic improve yourself you're not you know solving multiplications it's somewhere that the harder you work uh and you know tell me if i'm wrong but the harder that you work the further that you get, the more hours that you're willing to put in.

16:32And so how did you even find out that kitchens were an option?

16:37Douglas McMaster:When you're not academic, it really narrows the search of what you can become. And it was serendipitous in that there is, I remember going to a really, really, really awful hotel restaurant. And there was a guy and I didn't know it was awful at the time, but the food was all frozen in plastic bags and put into a microwave. And that's what I mean by awful but at the time I didn't know that that was bad or good and there was a guy who I really looked up to who's just like the older cool kid who I remember was very nice to me he was part of this cool crowd and um I just remember him being nice to me and that wasn't always common um you know kids can be quite harsh you know it says somebody showing a bit of compassion you know lights lights you up and he was a chef in that kitchen and I just remember thinking there's a there's a pathway that I could probably do I could probably go into that kitchen and this you know awful landscape of academia I don't think is going to affect me getting into that that kitchen and yeah and just applied to be a kitchen porter a pot wash and when I was 16 17 and rapidly falling out of school and yeah I just got into that kitchen and fell in love not with cooking because there was very little cooking going on there it was more the environment which I think anything that wasn't academia I would have fallen in love with um at that point and yeah kitchens are a bit like pirate ships there is this kind of lawlessness there are rules and there are systems in place that you have to sort of honor but there was a anti-authoritarian approach to everything and certainly that kitchen and actually all the kitchens I've worked for and a lot of chefs are people there's a lot of neuro neurodivergent um individuals in kitchens because of that same reason because academia just you know didn't suit them and they might or might not have been recognized as as their brains working differently and yeah kitchens just unconsciously or consciously seem quite appealing to non-academics.

18:48So yeah, the silo now is probably 95 % neurodivergent,

18:53Douglas McMaster:which is interesting. But yeah, no, that's how I got into kitchens at that time. And then as you describe it, you kind of went on this gastronomic crusade as a pirate through many different kitchens and worked your way up and ended up traveling and went to Australia. I remember before the crusade, I was working at St. John Bread and Wine, which is an amazing restaurant that practices nose to tail cooking in London. I remember that being so significant as a restaurant because what I was seeing in the restaurants I'd previously worked at, and these were like two Michelin star restaurants, Michelin star, like, you know, these really fine dining establishments.

19:34Douglas McMaster:And I went from this hotel kitchen that was, you know, really not worth noting to Michelin star kitchens. I made that jump and that jump was made because in the very limited knowledge that I had of gastronomy, you know, you hear these chefs talking about Michelin stars and rosettes and stuff. And so I literally just thought I'm going to aim for the top. And I aimed for the top because I felt at the bottom. like spiritually i existed at the bottom of bottom ranks of society of of the universe i was in the gutter so i thought right if i can aim for the top and just work harder than everyone maybe that'll mean i will be less dumb and less prove your sense of self-worth as well exactly i must be something if i'm here with the best of the best yeah exactly and so i did i went to a two michelin star kitchen as my first real job when I was 17, 18.

20:35Douglas McMaster:An awful experience. And then sort of bounced around a few of that sort of establishments thinking that this is the place to be because it's on paper, these are the best. So of course I need to do this. And it was an awful reality. It was bullying and violence and everything wrong with the world in a kitchen. But I kind of thought, well, school was awful. This is awful. Maybe just life is awful. Right. And so, yeah, I was bouncing around these kitchens. And I remember this chef of mine who I also looked up to and respected, he went down to London to work at St. John and he was telling me, you know, this place is really good.

21:12Douglas McMaster:You should consider it. And I remember looking at the St. John cookbook thinking, this is terrible. Because I was brainwashed in these Michelin star kitchens to saying what is Michelin is the best. And I thought that, you know, I drank the Kool-Aid. I thought, yep, okay, this is what's the best. And this guy, this chef Billy, he was like, no, no, I disagree. I think this is better. It's different, but better. And like telling me all these things about St. John and I just didn't get it. And it only was because I really, really, really respected him that I took a kind of a gamble and moved to London from the north and worked at St.

21:54Douglas McMaster:John Brennan Wine. I was 19 years old and I just didn't get it. I thought it was, you know, the presentation of food was, you know, beige and it was just on a chipped white plate and it was food on toast. And it was there was no kind of fancy, you know, trickery. I don't get why Billy and a lot of people are saying that this place is special. It probably took a year for the penny to drop. And eventually when it dropped, it really was this huge revelation. I guess you know retrospectively from an artistic point of view my dad was a poet and a painter and he was an abstract thinker abstract guy and that that is very much part of me and I think St.

22:40Douglas McMaster:John was a kind of catalyst to to start thinking like my dad was thinking and you know in in these in these creative ways and I realized that St. John was pioneering a philosophy they believed in something that wasn't just mimicking other restaurants and that's what happens in human societies is that we iterate and we mimic and you know we see the trends of things and we think okay well we're going to go with the trend because that for whatever reason is working and so chefs imitate chefs that are trending or like successful and then you just kind of get this homogenous society of things whereas john was like no we believe that we have this philosophy um that this is this makes more sense than what everybody else is preaching and practicing and it's risky to to stand out and to to diverge from the pack you know you're stepping aside and saying no this is a different expression this is a different way of being a restaurant you know this is a different way of cooking this is a different way of seeing our relationship to food and i didn't get it because i was you know part of the marching crew towards you know this superficial success of michelin stars and exactly and and it took a long while to realize that what they were talking about was so healthy you know not only was the kitchens a healthy work environment psychologically emotionally um the cooking was healthy it was thinking outside the box about you know just eating the fillet and you know it doesn't make sense these all these other cuts are equally or more delicious but everyone else is saying that the fillet was the best bit and it's like no no no it's not this is the this is all the best bit the whole animal is the best bit and that was their specific way of seeing you know that was the philosophy yeah it was definitely more than Knows the tail.

24:39Douglas McMaster:Knows the tail. But, you know, the entire restaurant stripped itself of frivolous, you know, ornate items that were kind of expensive and superficial. Superfluous. Superfluous, yeah. And it just stripped all that fluff away from the restaurant experience and it was stark and not necessarily for everyone, and that's fine. That's subjective. But what they were doing stood out so much and it just had such a profound impact on me. really changed who I, who I was. And I felt different and better as I, ah, this is like a massive upgrade of how I feel, like whatever they're connected to, I'm now connecting to, and it feels like a relief in some way.

25:25Douglas McMaster:And so I started thinking, well, you know, they're thinking differently. What other restaurants are thinking differently? And then I looked around the world at restaurants that were thinking differently. And I went to them, whether that was in England, the fat duck, whether that was in Copenhagen, Noma, and it was just, I'm going to go around the world and I'm going to go on this pilgrimage to all these places that are thinking differently because thinking differently now at St. John's making me feel more whole. You know, I was tapped into this mainstream consciousness that made me feel empty.

25:55Douglas McMaster:And now I'm like feeling something. I feel I'm starting to feel alive for the first time. That purpose. Exactly. It was like there was this void and it was always there and I felt empty and then St. John's started to tickle that a little bit and like fill it in a little bit and I was like oh this feels good this is like a relief it satiated this feeling of dread and so I went to fill that void in even more and the idea was you know these restaurants that stood out and were thinking differently would maybe fill that gap. At what point were you starting to figure out the thread line of these restaurants and the things that I'm finding most interesting is around sustainability and waste and because I think it would be very unusual for a cook to to notice in the way that you started to notice how much plastic waste was being used how much things were being thrown away you know that expression like art is the hammer that smashes the mirror of reality and St John was like a little in the mirror and it kind of cracked and you know what I was seeing as the world through that mirror was starting to crack and there were these other like and then the big absolute blow that destroyed my perception of reality was an artist called Joost Bakker um tall beautiful Dutch born Australian dude absolute genius extraordinary mind he has what I've sort of understood as somebody who's held on to that childlike curiosity about the world his power is that he's not influenced you know we're all unconsciously and consciously influenced by our peers the world advertisement you know things we read things we watch on youtube that's all influencing our perception of of the world and i think what he was um he was incredibly resilient to that the influence of of outside stimulus and he managed to keep this childlike curiosity of wonder and all and he's a very smart very factually he can reel off all these statistics and it's just like extraordinary but he yet has this like what if this what if that what if that questions doesn't take what people tell him as like this is a factual this is how i need to adopt this information you know He's like, no, that's not for me.

28:19Douglas McMaster:No, that's not for me. And Pat parries all of that away and then just thinks clearly. And I think that is probably a common denominator with a lot of real innovators. And so Yoast, I met Yoast in Sydney in 2011, and I was working at one of these holier-than-thou temples, the top of the pyramid of food excellence, apparently, considered one of the world's best restaurants. And it was a sin. This restaurant was, if nature had the world's 50 best restaurants, I guarantee our 50 best world restaurants would be at the bottom of nature's 50 best world restaurants. and so for those maybe listeners who have not heard of the world's 50 best restaurants that's a guide uh like the michelin guide and so is this 50 best restaurants in the world and i'd worked in a lot of them i'd worked in 15 of the world's 50 best restaurants at that time doing stages so i really knew what those restaurants looked like and i think a lot about nature as in like what does nature want you know if we're going to talk about in a moment maybe it's what sustainability really is we can't think about that without thinking about what nature wants but to digress we used to fill a skip of food waste every day wow a skip and this was not just food waste this was the best produce in the world it was in sydney and we were getting produce from biodynamic farms and the blue mountains and some of the best seafood it was extraordinary and it was probably maximizing 30 percent of everything that was being purchased everything coming through that front door was only 30 there was 70 waste going into a skip not not compost just just like with all the plastic and everything it was a real sin from the perspective of nature and and that at the time was standard practice yeah it was like yep this is what the world is this is how it is this is excellence and so in that kitchen I was a bit of a rebel because I'd worked at St John and I was like this is taking things out of the bin being like maybe we could use this yeah and one day I got into a scrap with the sous chef and there was a whole incident with quails and an altercation that led to me being asked to leave politely they couldn't fire me because it was complicated um but yeah no i chose to to walk out that day and as if by some force of cosmic serendipity there was this building made out of waste materials that was designed to be an ecosystem designed by joast backer this this this this genius designer and then there was this loud music playing and it was long snaking queue of people queuing in this tropical rain it was very um very vivid memory and I remember like getting into this building I could feel my heart beating and I knew and this is not not being hyperbolic that this was going to be the rest of my life I absolutely was so sure that whatever this was was going to be the rest of my life I think it was quite emotional I was quite existential about this whole industry and this experience and just being like down and out in Sydney and just like kind of giving up on this idea of hospitality and I was just in this building and like I don't know what this is but I love it I love it so much and there were chefs sat down with customers you know there was no windows because they didn't have time to build windows because it was a temporary building for a food and wine festival there was a beehive on the roof there was hundreds of different plants hanging over the the ceiling and these old barrels and there's this weird machine like cylindrical auger spinning around outside and it was this prophetic inscriptions of uh thoughts painted all over the ceiling and the walls and the food was served in the glasses were like jam jars and recycled wine bottles and the tables were propagated with a keg system and there was um pouring wine from from the table from these kind of wires coming out from under the table into jam jars and there's wine coming out of kegs and I'd never seen anything like it and it was such an abstraction from what I understood and it was that that hammer that smashes the mirror of reality for me it really um changed me fundamentally and yeah it's just this feeling more than anything that I knew that this was going to be the rest of my life and it's never more true than today wow what an experience and i can imagine you going in there and being like wow this is visually overstimulating it sounds like everything everywhere all at once yeah um when did you actually meet jost and what was your first initial conversation with him so i don't remember the first meeting but i remember the first memorable bit was him within a very short span of knowing me might have been the same day I can't remember if I'd returned the next day but I do remember him towering over me he's he's really really tall and very like intimidating and I was terrified you know we talk about public speaking like I wouldn't want him in the audience uh you know he's very intimidating I remember him towering over me and and just saying like oh you know got this opportunity to build this same thing in London do you want to be the head chef just like that he just had this instinct that i was going to be significant in his you know project in his vision of the future which is right i think very he was right because we're still very very close friends 14 years later and he's coming over in a few months to to celebrate 10 years of silo in in the uk um so yeah he's a very significant figure and i just have a very vivid memory of him saying do you want to be the head chef just seeing something in me that people had never seen him you know like everybody treated me badly in these kitchens it was an awful awful existence in in those sorts of kitchens everyone bullies each other you know and then again school was probably worse than that so you know when you had this amazing artist saying, do you want to be the head chef?

34:55Douglas McMaster:Like having so much faith in you. Yeah. You felt chosen. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That little boy was like, I'm worthy. Exactly.

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35:38Now, back to the show.

35:44I do want to switch into the sustainability questions and there's a Desmond Tutu quote that you give in your TEDx which is there comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river we need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in so where do you think

36:02Douglas McMaster:this starts yeah i mean that that that is the best description of silo that is the that that also opens the book with silo book that's the first quote is so profound to me in that if we deal with sustainability on the surface we're just going to keep putting plasters on things that are just going to keep happening we're just gonna we're never gonna solve the root cause of the problem we need to go upstream we need to find out why waste exists where that waste is coming from why it exists and how do we get rid of it you know how is waste related to sustainability what are those relationships and so fundamentally that is the story of silo in a kind of post meeting yoast mentality of a post-yost post-yost mentality um i yeah i i started having these glitches i started seeing things i i know i really through the matrix genuinely it is a great there was glitches um in the matrix and uh i started i did start seeing things and i just questioned everything everything started to like unravel in really in ways that the more it unraveled the more that void disappeared and i and i know this is going to sound ridiculous to so many people but it is so true and gave an enormous amount of clarity to what is on the horizon and i've never ever ever wavered and will never waver from moving towards that thing on the horizon and the first the first vision was this bin in a jungle uh i was um so just to contextualize that a bit i was in a cafe that yost had bought in melbourne uh or got a lease on or whatever and he said right we're gonna before we do london we're gonna start by you know this little cafe and we're not gonna have a bin all credit to yost he had a building made of waste and he had a bin in it and he was like this is a paradox this doesn't make sense there's a bin in this zero waste aspirational project and so let's like really hunker down and figure out how to not have a bin and so he's from melbourne even though that project was in sydney where we met and so wind the clock forward like seven or eight months we've got this lease on this tiny little cafe stuck me in as the leader just literally like dunk and um like doug we're not gonna have a bin we're gonna call it silo So Silo actually started in Melbourne.

38:41And what did that mean? Silo means?

38:44Douglas McMaster:So Silo is an industrial vessel in which a material lives in it until the next phase of its journey, its next life. So water, you know, before it's irrigation, wheat before it goes to the mill as flour. So it's holding a singular material on a journey associated with industrial agriculture predominantly. certainly um and there's a lot of sort of fun paradox paradoxical kind of nods to industrialization with silo but silo in our interpretation was like an entire ecosystem in a silo which would be a restaurant but yeah so i was in this little cafe and one night i was making shortbread and milled the flour because you said to me right we can only work with farmers because they're the people that will be able to give us food unpackaged.

39:37The raw material as well, yeah.