Interview: Sam Scott, Head Chef of Ozone Coffee Roasters’ London eateries on sustainability, covid & operations
Photography by Ozone Roastery.
If you are lucky enough to have visited one of Ozone Coffee Roasters’ locations in London then you will know that their eateries are multisensory: coffee roasting aromas, the industrial visual cues of machinery, chefs working in full view, a softening provided by plants, and the buzz of happy diners. And then the casually Antipodean yet fiercely local food arrives…
We caught up with Head Chef Sam Scott to find out more about the Ozone philosophy, operations and their context in the saturated London hospitality industry.
Words by George Maguire
Published first on Special Sauce.
Could you give us some background on yourself and how you came to be Head Chef at Ozone?
Sam: Growing up in New Plymouth, New Zealand, where Ozone was first started back in 1998, Ozone was always a part of my life. My dad used to go every day for his morning coffee (still does!), and I’ve known Craig Macfarlane, Ozone’s Managing Director since I was young.
When I moved to London, it felt like homecoming into Ozone’s Leonard Street kitchen. I was working under Joe O’Connell, our then Head Chef who now heads up our New Zealand eateries in Auckland and New Plymouth. He was really inspiring to work with, striving for sustainability in the kitchens and always encouraging of my progression. We still work closely now to maintain consistency and shared values in our kitchens across the UK and NZ.
Taking on the Head Chef role has allowed me to continue Joe’s legacy at Ozone and make sure we’re still striving for betterment through our waste mitigation practices.
I enjoyed reading through Ozone’s ‘Our Kitchen Philosophy’. What does sustainability mean to you & why is it important?
Sustainability to me is a necessity for a better planet. It’s not just a singular approach or goal; it’s embedded in everything we do and is a reflection of our betterment value around always improving. To me, sustainability means doing all the things we can to serve delicious, thoughtful food and coffee that supports our people and planet. It’s not just about reducing waste, but also how we source, what we do with those ingredients and how we educate our community and team about the bigger goals and impetus around this.
What trends have you picked up on across London’s hospitality sector - perhaps spurred on by the pandemic?
Most of the unique, waste-saving techniques you find at Ozone are things we’ve always done. They’re core to our kitchen philosophy, so we don’t consider them as trends. We always source great local ingredients from top suppliers to reduce our footprint, use by-products from core dishes to inform new ones and smoke, ferment or pickle wherever possible.
We’re always aware of what's happening in the London food and hospitality scene, but mindful to not follow trends too closely. We might serve classic brunch dishes, but we do so in our own unique way—it’s about challenging ourselves to create dishes that ultimately reduce waste and our overall footprint. It’s great to see more restaurants offering more sustainable, locally sourced menus, and I certainly hope that’s more than a trend and sticks around.
What kind of hospitality businesses do you feel are missing from London?
If you are a younger or new, less-established chef or restaurant it can be really challenging to enter the London hospitality scene at all. It’s a shame because there’s so much emerging young talent that have so much creativity to offer. London is missing an opportunity to make it more accessible for new chefs to enter and have a chance to showcase their menus and talents.
Is it tricky to balance sustainability with great-tasting food? Could you talk us through the inception of a particular dish and highlight some challenges?
We form relationships with the best local suppliers who are working hard to source the best ingredients, which makes it much easier for us to work sustainably. One example of a challenge with this is that we’re mindful about sourcing second-selection vegetables—the kind that maybe isn’t so perfect looking and might otherwise get picked over or tossed. We’re happy to use these to make sure they don’t end up in a landfill, but it can be challenging to always find consistency with second-selection products.
It’s important that we know where our ingredients come from, and we plan our dishes around what’s available. For example, I knew I wanted to use sea kelp on our new menu but could only source it from somewhere in Scotland which made it expensive to get here and added unnecessary travel. We reached out to our mates at Haeckels, who we already work with to supply our used coffee grounds for their products, and asked if they could source us seaweed direct from the beaches in Margate (South East England). Now we get seaweed directly from the Kent seashore and use it to make things like seaweed butter and XO sauce!
When adding new dishes to the menu (or tweaking existing dishes) how do you access feedback from diners?
We’re always listening to our community to inform what we do next, tweaking the menu based on both feedback we’re seeing and what local, seasonal produce or meats are available to us. We serve classic brunch favourites that we put our own stamp on with simple and creative waste-saving techniques. I’m always thinking about new ideas or ingredients I want to try, so there’s always an opportunity to tweak our menu as the seasons change.
What non-food-related aspects of dining have you looked into to improve or differentiate the eating experience at Ozone?
At our Emma Street eatery, we extended our seating area to include outdoor tables following the pandemic outdoor dining rules. It worked so well that we made it a permanent feature. From the start, Ozone was designed with the customer experience in mind, with a simple aesthetic and sustainable design features like our Snøhetta stools that are made from recycled fishing nets. We’re fortunate we haven’t had to make too many changes over the years to keep our community happy, but we’re always open to change and adapting to our customer's needs.
Has Ozone pivoted as a business during Covid? If so, how?
Our industry and our team, along with the entire world have been faced with many unforeseen challenges throughout the pandemic. We’ve had to do a lot of things differently to continue providing great coffee experiences for our community over the last couple of years. For example, we pivoted to takeaway service during lockdowns in our eateries and further built out our e-commerce and marketing team as online coffee subscriptions grew with more people working and staying at home.
The pandemic also created recruiting challenges within the hospitality space. While we’re thrilled to be getting onto the other side of everything, recruiting challenges are something we’re still experiencing. We used to be open and serving food all day every day, but right now we’re focused only on our daytime service that we’re most known for. We plan to resume dinner service from May, so keep an eye out for more new dishes!
How has business been since fully reopening? Could you give us a sense of covers per week, etc?
It's been a rollercoaster, but we‘re enjoying the ride! A real sum of highs and lows between navigating fluctuating customer footfall, team recruitment and the ever-changing covid restrictions. The team and I learned so much by facing these challenges head-on together, and we’re ready for more ‘normal’ days ahead. This new menu feels like the start of the next chapter with fresh ingredients and fresh outlooks.
We’re seeing a steadier customer presence and it feels like we’re on the cusp of people returning to work in the UK hospitality sector. We’re not quite back to our pre-covid trading, but we’re hopeful to return to a ‘new normal’ this summer and continue to grow from there.
How does Ozone organise its recipes & maintain consistency with the NZ eateries?
We keep a standard, physical recipe book to track everything in our kitchens, from our dishes and the ingredients, methods and by-products of those, quantities and lifespans of ingredients and more.
I’m always speaking to Joe, Ozone's Head Chef in New Zealand (New Plymouth & Auckland) about new menu ideas and inspiration. We share the same philosophy and approach, so we want to maintain a level of consistency. The way we go about designing menus and coming up with new dishes is always the same, but because we’re in very different hemispheres and regions, the produce that’s available to us is quite varied. Our recipe books are never the same at any one time, but we’re always collaborating team and sharing ideas about what we’re doing.
Resources:
Head to Ozone Eateries.
Read Ozone’s Kitchen Philosophy.
Follow @ozonecoffeeuk.
Watch Sam in action in #OnePlanetPlate.
Learn about Snøhetta stools.
