Our Story
This is the origin story of CaterConscious; how it evolved from a playful idea to a purpose-driven social enterprise.
2022: Friends & Faux
It started with a road-trip to Byron Bay and a handful of mushrooms. After a long day of hiking, two friends returned back to their humble abode, utterly famished and fatigued. Inspired by the nature they had immersed themselves in earlier, Chetan decided to cook a plant-based dinner with the ingredients they had on hand.
An hour later his friend took the first bite of a shitake mushroom taco, eyes lighting up as he went in for another. As he licked the teriyaki glaze off his fingers, he made an offhand proposition that this funghi-affair should be shared with the world. The idea, while initially dismissed, consumed Chetan upon his return to Sydney.
Two chaotic months later, a foodstall was up and running at the the Sydney Vegan Markets. The mission at Friends & Faux was to create delicious, innovative, plant-based dishes with a fusion of our favourite cuisines. While the crowds loved our “Meetball sub skewers”, “Katsu shr!mp canapes”, and “Thandai milkshakes”, the show was truly stolen by our “Korean Fried Chick’n Tacos” featuring the beautiful king oyster mushroom atop its tortilla throne.
We were very grateful to receive a fantastic response, and also having the opportunity to connect with so many friendly customers and chefs in the vegan community.
2023: Pivot to catering
In 2023, we shifted our focus away from the markets and began focusing on catering events instead, largely due to the operational complexity of setting up stalls and constant uncertainty of bad weather.
When speaking to the chefs in our circles, many told us they were struggling to stay in the green as cost of ingredients skyrocketed and consumer spending dipped. So we decided to help them, and instead of doing the cooking ourselves we began connecting them with our catering clients.
2024: Conscious catering marketplace
As our network of catering partners grew, so did the demand for plant-based event catering.
Moreover, we found that there were very few catering options available in Sydney in which he food was sustainably sourced, produced, transported and packaged.
With scientific research showing that animal-based agriculture has very high greenhouse gas emissions intensity, we conducted our own analysis and measured our carbon footprint from the raw ingredients to food delivery. We found that our catering services have 30% lower carbon emissions than their animal-based equivalents, and we took it a step further by purchasing carbon offsets to make our services fully carbon neutral.
We are now a growing team of chefs, event planners, software developers, environmental scientists and delivery drivers, united with a common purpose to create conscious, carbon-neutral catering experiences at events.
And to think it all started from a spark of consciousness!
You'll love it.
So will the planet.
Explore our delicious, carbon-neutral catering packages.
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