It’s been now about one year and a half that Julien and I started with Fermenthings, a space 100% dedicated to fermentation. In September 2017 we opened a little shop in Jette that Cedric managed and in the summer of 2018 we started going to events as a food concept and taught Adeline the ropes of production and food conception. Supported by a group of volunteers and amateur producers we took the time to question our future as a project. What you will read here is our first draft for the future of Fermenthings: More production, more inclusion, and more workshops.
1. The bad news: closing the shop as you know it.
Some of you heard it maybe already, but we closed the space in Jette on 31st of December… to open a new space in Laeken in May of 2019. We invested a lot of time and energy in this space, and want to thank everybody involved in making it such a warm place by coming to the events, hosting your owns or just passing by for a chat. But if we want to continue as Fermenthings we need to look at a place that is better accommodated for what we want to do: a professional production space, a kitchen and more room for workshops. This isn’t possible in the current location.
‘We are saddened to have to let go our space in Jette, because we wanted to bring something fresh to a part of town that really deserves the love and care of good local shops. The new space will be in Laeken in the old Byrrh building and will be part of a centre for food entrepreneurs with bottom up and circular economy implications. But don’t panic, we will not disappear because from January till April we will be touring around Brussels and beyond to share the fermentation love
2. Fermenthings on tour: On foot, by cargobike and foodtruck!
Last summer we enjoyed touring in Brussels (Plazey, SWAFFF, Brussels Beer Fest,…), Ghent and the Netherlands and want to continue doing this to build up our community and share good food and drinks with great producers and people. We are talking to some great people and producers to share events together. Here is a little list of places we will be working with:
En Stoemelings, Cantillon, Brasserie De La Sambre, Mame Noka, Tartines et Boterham, Green lab, Le Coq, La Fruitière, Totem, Paté to the People, Syphon, DOK, ROK, Or Coffee, Oersoep, Cultureghem, Sajou, Terre@Air, Semance 2019,La Source, Chemistry and Botanic …
These 4 months of touring will help us reconnect with our partners and producers, prepare the new challenges and test out new workshops and concepts while being on the move and enjoying every second out if it. We want to enter our new location with a fresh feeling and take the time to reconnect with as much people as possible! Learn, teach, share our love of Fermentation, good food and good drinks with as much people as possible
We are open for any kind of collaboration in these next couple of month, just send us an email to info@fermenthings.be and we will look at what is possible.
3. Is it a bar? Is it a lab? Is it a restaurant or a workshop space? It’s Fermenthings and Friends
New space, new concept? Yes. At Be-here we will be taking up a 600m2 space with at least 3 other partners. We are still in the last negations so we can’t confirm every partner. But La Source Microbrewery will join us and open their Brewpub, while Terre@Air will bring honey and apple juice production to the space while giving lectures and workshops around environmental education.
Other partners will be working around gastronomy and coffee and we will work close with them to create new recipes and collaborations. We will focus on the production of 4 ferments: Kombucha , Hot Sauces, Kimchi and Sour Cucumbers and will open our door to anybody willing to create their product inside our accommodation. While reorganizing our priorities we also came across the wonderful world of Cooperatives and are hopefully launching our cooperative platform in Februari of next year.
This platform called L’Outil will make it possible for (fermented) food entrepreneurs and citizens to work in a transparent way using shared tools and space. While creating and sharing good fermented products is still our main goal, we think that societal transformation isn’t simply producing local and circular, but also looking at how we organize our society to include more people and give them a chance to bloom inside this field.
It’s a big leap forward and we don’t know where we will end up, but we want to try it and hopefully have your support doing what we love while meeting new and interesting people all around the world.