Great food at a restaurant that’s doing more

In 2023 Torquay’s Samesyn owner Graham Jefferies closed the restaurant’s doors, taking time to transform its look and focus and reopen as Samesyn 2.0.

The revamped restaurant, which opened in February, is now a profit for purpose enterprise, dedicated to responsibly sourced food, minimising waste and giving back to the community.

Jefferies has been a chef for about 26 years and said that the first iteration of Samesyn was good, but he felt there was something missing.

“I kind of got to the point where work wasn’t just about cooking nice food and selling it to people that can afford it when there’s people that are struggling.”

Inspired to try be of service, Jefferies wanted to create a restaurant that offered a good experience as well as benefiting the local community.

“The idea initially was to try and create something to help people that are facing food insecurity and to try and make a little bit of an impact on the food system,” Jefferies said.

“I got more involved with chatting to the guys at Feed Me and learning about stats of the amount of people in the region that are facing food insecurity and just wanted to be able to make Samesyn more meaningful.”

The restaurant has partnered with Feed Me Surf Coast, who give Samesyn access to vegetables, which they then pickle or ferment to use in dishes.

“Only a small portion of what we get is from there; it’s only vegetables, so that then helps us become more profitable.

“Then all the profits that we generate, the entire profits from the business, go back into serving the community and helping those that are in need,” Jefferies said.

Samesyn also takes into consideration what’s on their menu and where the products come from, with all of their meats being free range and sustainably sourced.

Each item or dish on the menu has something on it that’s either a waste product or something that gets overlooked.

“It might be using the leaves of a fig tree to make a drink, or using a retired dairy cow, a Holstein Friesian cow rather than Angus as the steak option.”

 

Before reopening as Samesyn 2.0, the restaurant had always tried to minimise waste but now, as part of the transformation, Jefferies has gotten rid of their general waste bin.

“Now it’s a case that we don’t have the bins, so now we’ve got to actually do it. It’s like a forced action,” he said.

In their first three weeks of trading, they produced just three shopping bags of rubbish.

Everything that goes into the restaurant is taken into consideration from how they take customer orders right down to the bandaids they choose.

“Before something goes on the menu, we’ve got to consider what the packaging is, how it gets delivered, does it come in a crate that’s reusable, or does it come in a polystyrene box?”

Apart from the washing machine and dishwasher, the restaurant doesn’t use any chemicals as part of their cleaning.

“We use e-water which is water that goes through a treatment with salt and electricity and turns it into a cleaner and a sanitiser, so we don’t use any chemicals down the sink anymore.

“There are no packaged cleaning products because that’s something that has to be discarded.”

The restaurant also doesn’t have waiters but instead has four chefs who do the cooking and the serving.

Jefferies said it has been a journey to get to this point, but he’s found it to be interesting, stimulating, and exciting.

“We haven’t really found a model that does all of this, so we haven’t really had reference points.

“We’ve had to figure out stuff and that’s kind of been exciting, because it’s almost like there’s no rules, so we can kind of workout what works for ourselves.”

For Jefferies, he is proud of the team behind Samesyn, saying that they’re all “marching to the same beat” and all want to achieve the same thing.

“There’s a small group of us, but the crew that are on board literally treat it like they own it.

“Everyone’s really passionate about trying to help people that are struggling and also trying to minimise waste and trying to have a good impact on the environment.”

The purpose behind running Samesyn is what motivates Jefferies to keep going with his work.

“If you feel like you’re making someone else’s lives a little bit better, that’s a good enough reason to come to work.”

 

Jefferies said when people come into his restaurant, he wants them to experience knowing that their money is trying to do better things.

“People enjoy the fact that when they come here, they know a portion of what they do is of benefit to either the environment, the climate, the planet or humans.”

Jefferies also wants people to come and have fun at the restaurant and come and try things that they haven’t had before.

Local and low-impact items and décor were considered in the new fitout of the restaurant with a focus on being comfortable and fun.

Looking towards the future, Jefferies’ aim is to reduce their impact even further with a goal of achieving zero waste.

Samesyn 2.0 can be found at 3/24 Bell Street, Torquay.

For more information, visit samesyn.com.au