‘Follow your heart’: how the 2014 movie Chef with Jon Favreau influenced a Hong Kong food waste pioneer
- Carla Martinesi is co-founder and CEO of Chomp, which reduces waste by helping food and beverage businesses in Hong Kong sell leftover food
- She says Chef made her realise that working in hotels or restaurants before going on to do one’s own thing was a possible journey
Feel-good comedy-drama “Chef” (2014), directed by and starring Jon Favreau, tells the story of a chef who loses his job at a fine-dining restaurant and starts running his own food truck alongside his young son, mending his personal relationships in the process.
Carla Martinesi, the Swiss-born, Hong Kong-based co-founder and chief executive of Chomp, which reduces waste by helping food and beverage businesses sell leftover food, tells Richard Lord how it changed her life.
Chef came out when I graduated high school. I watched it at home, on television. My parents knew I loved cooking shows, so we were definitely going to watch it.
It was the movie that triggered the thought, “Quit your job and follow your heart.”
I wanted to be an artist – a painter or graphic designer. I didn’t know hospitality was an industry; I just thought it was a job people got in the summer.