Local Food matters – everyone can do more

Hildibrand is a tourism company located in Neskaupstaður in Austurland – Iceland. Hildibrand runs two hotels, two restaurants, catering for the local school as well as running a farm.

HOW DID THIS ALL START? Hákon Hildibrand, founder and owner talks about the development.

“Originally in 2012 when we started out planning for our first hotel we knew that since we are situated very far from the conventional tourist areas in Iceland so we figured out at that we had to offer something authentic and special to get the guests attention, a hotel on its own in an area with few guests was not going to make it on its own. We put our focus on offering good food that was made from the local ingredients available to us throughout the year. The family were farmers for generations and living in a community that builds its economy on fishing we built on the traditions of food in our society.
When people hear of restaurants marketing themselves for local ingredients our mind instantly goes to the expensive modern upscale places with New Nordic menus and fancy design. That is not what we are, it is not where we come from, we knew that going that direction was not an option for us financially, so we offer authentic food that is hearty, classic and simple and builds on the tradition. It worked and has helped us tremendously in building up a reputation and opened up for us tourism markets, but it also had an unexpected positive side effect, it brought in lots of local business from people living in our region, who knew that local people might like local food!”

In the years since opening, Hildibrand has regenerated their family farm that was running quite idle in the last decade. Every year they are raising more sheep and every year the gardens grow.

Hákon tells about Hildibrands effort to minimizing and controlling food waste and how they strive to build a circle life of their food such as feeding chickens leftovers to get eggs and putting coffee grinds into their gardens.

WHAT CAN OTHERS TAKE OUT OF YOUR STORY AS A LEARNING LESSON?

“What we have also found that using local ingredients as well as growing your own is much cheaper. Yes, It’s labor-consuming, but we have staff anyway working all year so we build it into the working, we work on different food in different seasons. Being a very seasonal business with many extremes between busy and off seasons there are many times where staff and resources can be utilized to prepare and process food for next busy season. Using local ingredients and preserving traditions around food culture is good business in every way, it is not just for the fancy Michelin star places, it is also just for everyday restaurants that want to offer honest food.”