< PreviousUAE food security caterermiddleeast.com October 2020 20 The UAE is overcoming its environmental conditions to become a world leader in local produceUAE food security 21 October 2020 caterermiddleeast.comUAE food security caterermiddleeast.com October 2020 22 Caption here please Customers at Emirates BiofarmUAE food security 23 October 2020 caterermiddleeast.com Just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Standing amidst the never ending desert that is the UAE, you could be forgiven for thinking this arid land must struggle to give life to the millions of people that populate it. There are no elds of wheat or rice that you see in so many other countries, no livestock grazing by the side of the road. When you hear such statistics as “the UAE imports 90% of its produce”, it’s hard to imagine that this is a place that can securely ensure its citizens and residents will have access to food in the event of a crisis. And yet, thanks to the work of Mariam Al Mheiri, Minister of State for Food Security, the UAE is not just surviving, it’s thriving, and is in fact leading the way globally when it comes to producing and distributing fresh produce to its people. “Food security is about accessibility, availability, affordability, stability, and utilisation of food in general. We usually de ne it as making sure the people of a country have access to safe, nutritious, suf cient, and affordable food to live a healthy and active lifestyle at all times,” Ms Al Mheiri tells us over a Zoom call. Although it might not be immediately visible to the passive observer, Ms Al Mheiri reveals that the UAE has more than 35,000 farmers that have been toiling away for generations in harsh desert conditions. The minister’s job has been to disrupt the traditional food systems and set the country on a path towards becoming the global leader it wants to be. So far it’s been a roaring success. When Ms Al Mheiri took of ce as the rst ever food security minister back in 2017, the UAE was ranked 33rd on the Global Food Security Index, a dynamic quantitative and qualitative model which benchmarks countries around the world against one another. Now, it has risen to 21st. “Our main goal is to become number one by 2051,” says Ms Al Mheiri. To do that the UAE is turning to technology. There have been huge investments in the AgTech sector, with the Abu Dhabi government revealing a one billion dirham incentive package in 2019. Ms Al Mheiri says the UAE “like to see ourselves as an open lab for the world to come here and try out things” and it appears to be working. Just last month Abu Dhabi’s RainMakers Capital Investment and GrowGroup IFS from the Netherlands revealed plans to build the world’s largest indoor farm in the UAE — a 17.5 hectare plot with the ability to produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce every year. They say the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the UAE’s response to the Covid-19 crisis is the clearest sign yet that its food security strategy is working, says Ms Al Mheiri. “Going through Covid-19 was like a test for us,” the minister tells us. “When you de ne food security it means you make sure everybody has access to safe, nutritious food at all times — and at all times is the key — so also in an emergency or a crisis.” His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, set the country’s stall out early when he said that providing food “We see the UAE as an open lab for the world to come try things” Mariam Al MheiriUAE food security caterermiddleeast.com October 2020 24 and medicine was a “red line” for the country, and so it proved. “We didn’t witness shelves being emptied of anything essential,” says Ms Al Mheiri. However, the crisis did reinforce efforts to improve food production in the country. “The UAE imports 90% of its food, which is not a bad thing,” she explains. “We still want to be a hub for food trade, we still want food to ow to the UAE. We want to increase imports, we want to increase exports and re-exports, but we want to be less dependent on net imports into the country. “To do that we need to step up two things. On the supply side we need to be less dependent on net imports and grow our food production, but let’s grow it more sustainably and let’s look at adopting technology. On the demand side, we need to work on improving our nutritional intake, our lifestyle, our diets. We need to look at nudging into better behaviour and reducing our food waste component as well.” Wastage is a huge issue for the UAE, says Ms Al Mheiri. “Of all the food that’s produced, more than a third gets put in the bin, that’s huge. Here in the UAE, the latest numbers are that a person wastes 200kg of food a year, and that’s quite a bit higher than the world average which is about 100kg.” It’s something that many in the F&B industry have been attempting to tackle head on. Spanish restaurant Boca in DIFC has led the way with zero-waste dinners held by active environmentalists to help spread the word. “All our chefs are trained to maximise usage of the products, it’s something we focused on quite some time ago,” says general manager Omar Shihab. “The chef constantly assesses everything that’s considered waste and tries to rethink it — from the skin of watermelon to the entire carcass of the animal.” The cultural reset forced by the coronavirus pandemic has also offered restaurants a chance to pause and pick their strategy, believes Shihab. “There are no rules anymore. Be really creative. Have conversations with your chefs on how to maximise things that are usually discarded. We really need to think about our restaurants differently as we come Yazen Al KodmaniUAE food security 25 October 2020 caterermiddleeast.com out of this and use it to launch waste reduction initiatives.” Emirates Biofarm, the UAE’s largest private organic farm, is aiming to reduce its waste each year through a series of innovative strategies. While so called ‘ugly’ fruit is often considered not appealing enough to be sold in supermarkets, and therefore wasted despite being just as edible and delicious as more attractive examples, operations manager Yazen Al Kodmani had packages of them sent to in uencers to showcase that one third of all food can be wasted in this way. Al Kodmani told Caterer Middle East that the farm is launching its own food brand, Nama, that will make ranges of jams and sauces using the fruits and vegetables that would usually be wasted as supermarkets don’t want them. “We want to expand and create these products and hopefully we can buy the waste of other farmers to create these jams and sauces in jars that are clear on the label that it is reducing food waste,” says Al Kodmani. “We’re really trying to compete in this market and create this industry that we feel is lacking — other countries that have centuries of farming they have that. So if you have milk production you have the industry of cheese, it’s all been created to reduce waste in these countries. Here we don’t have that.” Emirates Biofarm is also providing its ugly fruit for use in restaurants, where chefs can work with it and turn it into something incredible for customers who will never know it was previously discarded waste product. This kind of collaboration between farms and restaurants is also key to the UAE’s food security plan, says Ms. Al Mheiri. “Chefs are very important to this,” she tells us. “I would love to see more Emirati chefs come up and I would love to see chefs exploring what the UAE is growing and actually do visits to farms. Some of the ideas we had actually were to connect chefs to the local farms: rst of all to discover what the farmers are “I’d love to see chefs exploring what the UAE is growing”UAE food security caterermiddleeast.com October 2020 26UAE food security 27 October 2020 caterermiddleeast.com growing, what are the different avours, what are the different tastes they could bring in locally to what they serve people. At the end of the day people love delicious food and if the chef can say ‘Oh by the way, 80% of what you’re eating has been sourced locally’ it brings a smile to everybody’s face to know this is fresh, this is from here, and this is unique to the UAE as well.” By engaging with local farms and chefs, Ms Al Mheiri hopes to change the conversation when it comes to food. Supermarkets will stock whatever it is they think will sell, so if the UAE’s F&B scene can make local produce trendy, it will reduce the need to import other items from abroad. The likes of Hattem Mattar, Hadrien Villedieu of Inked, A Story of Food’s Neha Mishra, and TV chef Bobby Chinn are just some of the gastronomes that have been paying visits to Emirates Biofarm to see how they can collaborate. Al Kodmani believes its chefs like this, the ones that have invested in the UAE’s food scene, through opening their own venues or engaging with their audiences on social media, that can put the country on the map. He wants chefs to be creative with an ingredient: “Why don’t we create our own trends? You need somebody to come up with something, like an acai trend or whatever, that really bene ts the country. Somebody came up with the acai bowl and it’s a nal preparation. Why don’t we create a camel milk trend here? It’s an unused resource, it’s low in lactose, so if we create something with it, other countries would want it from us. The chefs are the ones with the creative minds to create something out of camel milk — some kind of cheese or something — that would create an industry here. I think eventually it will happen as we mature more. Dubai is an international city, we just need to introduce the product.” As the industry faces down the challenges caused by the global pandemic, now is the time to reinvent and reimagine the F&B world in the shape that we want it to be, otherwise we will continue to be a follower than a leader. But under the guidance of Ms Al Mheiri and with the help of the creative core of our restaurant scene, this challenge could become the greatest opportunity we have ever had. “Why don’t we create our own trends? Like camel milk.” Vertical farms are openingcaterermiddleeast.com October 2020 28 Determined to implement the latest digital trends and solutions to satisfy its most tech savvy customers’ needs, Chef Middle East will soon bring to the market a one of a kind e-commerce B2B platform that helps hospitality operators place their orders at a click of a button and track their delivery digitally. With the surge in B2C demand at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, CME decided the time is just right to simultaneously launch its speciality, premium and unique restaurant-quality ingredients offering to consumers looking for better quality options and greater value for money. The project planning started in 2019 with a digitalization process and implementation of advanced capabilities; the Covid-19 pandemic just made it more evident than ever that the e-commerce business channel is there to stay and grow. A study shows that 300% increase in consumer demand for e-commerce services in the UAE was recorded in the rst ve months of 2020. In response to the customers’ demands and market opportunities and in line with the global industry trends, CME proudly announces the launch of its digital portal, coming down the pike, for both B2B and B2C segments in the UAE market as a rst phase to then follow in regional branches. The company will soon launch its newly revamped website www.chefmiddleeast.com that will re ect an e-comme rce look and feel and upgraded functionalities. A sense from the market inspired the distributor to anticipate the upcoming path of the foodservice industry; market players and customers are prone to engage in a different way. The response Get your orders in arises with an ef cient digital way of placing orders, coupled with worthy interactions and assistance from CME team of experts as needed. With this new e-commerce platform, Chef Middle East will provide its B2B customers with a cutting-edge experience that is pertinent, up-to-date and brining convenience to the purchasing process. Steve Pyle, CEO of Chef Middle East, shared his perspective about e-commerce: “We have been preparing to improve our digital eco–system for the last 12 months and the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has broadened the scope of our intentions to provide a B2B platform which will support our customers, supply partners and our own team to ensure that the experience of interfacing with Chef Middle East becomes more Chef Middle East alters the face of B2B foodservice ordering with its awaited cutting- edge e-commerce ordering platformAdvertorial 29 October 2020 caterermiddleeast.com ef cient, effective and informative. Existing and potential customers will be able to access comprehensive product and recipe information that makes their buying experience swifter and simpler as well as improving overall customer service. Customers will have the opportunity to interrogate availability data and make buying decisions 24/7, comfortably and conveniently. Our own internal ef ciency will be honed as the data we build will enable us to better understand how to manage our value chain and service proposition more effectively.” The food distributor partnered with Levtech Consulting and Yergetek Customer Engagement companies to create and deliver this project. Sajid Azmi, CEO at Yegertek, commented: “One basic advantage for the B2B E-commerce is being able to automate a signi cant part of transactions, which leads to cost ef ciencies and ultimately makes the seller far more competitive. However, bene ts extend beyond mere cost and time savings, for both vendors and their customers; customer self-service, buyer registration, online catalogues and contractual terms can all be automated and made more seamless.” Azmi added: “There is a strong consensus in the industry that the next few years will witness a surge in B2B e-commerce volume, similar to the strong presence of B2C e-commerce platforms. The Covid-19 pandemic has introduced a certain degree of caution in business operations. However, I believe, in the mid to longer term, businesses will adopt the practice of working with smaller inventories, and rely on rapid ongoing order ful lment, using B2B platforms.” E-commerce solutions appear to develop a new appropriate model where managing and updating information is available in real-time for the customers to view, search and get informed about products availability, latest products launched, exclusive promotions and orders status with up- to-date data. Developing e-commerce capabilities is also a signi cant way to achieve improved customer satisfaction permitting foodservice operators to place their orders through a straightforward, fast and simple process any day and any time of the week which enables processing the orders more ef ciently with higher accuracy. Additionally, customers have the option to seamlessly manage the complete ordering process for multiple branch locations from a uni ed customer dashboard. Azmi added: “The huge promise of e-commerce, since its inception, has been the creation of a win-win for both buyers and sellers. With the advantages of the model becoming apparent to all concerned in recent years, the online transactions will only increase. However, we will see a shift in priorities from customers, who are becoming more sophisticated in articulating their needs. Convenience is becoming a default expectation and sellers will need to evolve their offerings and tertiary services, in order to differentiate their brand.” The distributor believes that their new e-commerce portal will allow a dynamic understanding of customers’ needs and requirements and capturing data-driven insights to help drive further innovation on the market. Moreover, the gures can be used to improve pricing data tracking, which enables developing enhanced strategies throughout the supply chain. These new digital capabilities are expected to achieve great momentum; Chef Middle East continues to use technology to create cutting-edge innovation, unparalleled accessibility, convenience and greater value for all its customers, old and new. “Inspiring Culinary Craftsmanship” remains the distributor’s main mission, bringing together world-class brands, premium quality food and beverage ingredients and talented foodservice professionals keen on exploring new kitchen solutions to get inspired and craft memorable dining experiences.Next >