Why it’s so hard to run a sustainable innovation-focused restaurant

For over a decade, Noma in Copenhagen has been one of the standard bearers of the high-end culinary world. This ‘New Nordic‘ restaurant made its reputation (and obtained its three Michelin stars and position in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants ranking) by focusing on culinary innovation, with a frequently changing menu driven by continual work by its in-house culinary research and development (R&D) team.

On 9 January 2023, Noma’s Danish chef and co-owner, René Redzepi, announced an imminent and significant transition: Noma would close as a restaurant in 2025 to focus on pop-ups and culinary innovation. Over a decade ago, El Bulli in Spain, one of the first innovation and R&D-led restaurants, made a similar transition.

Exploring the reasons behind the decision, an article about the upcoming changes at Noma in the New York Times explained:

The style of fine dining that Noma helped create and promote around the globe — wildly innovative, labour-intensive and vastly expensive — may be undergoing a sustainability crisis.

‘Sustainability’ here means something broader than economics and profitability. It now also includes a business’s environmental impact and whether its people (staff, management and owners) work in physiologically and psychologically healthy environments. A sustainable business model in this sense is one which could persist indefinitely without losing money or depleting either the environment or its people.