Impact Systems for Hospitality
We help you transform your business from what you buy, to what you bin and what it really costs — so the right thing and the profitable thing are the same thing.
Impact strategy, training, and talks for hospitality — from Lara Espírito Santo and George McLeod, founders of SEM, Lisbon.
The thesis
We've been told the food system is broken. It isn't. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do.
If its purpose were to feed people, it would be failing. But its purpose is to create wealth — and at that, it is close to perfect. And this is incredibly empowering, because there is no point fixing what isn't broken.
It's time to (re)build a resilient food system.
Restaurants sit at one of the most strategic points in the food chain. We are a keystone actor in this system — the farmers and farming we choose to support, how we choose to use the produce we procure, how our relationship with the food we create impacts culture. Collectively, we determine how the world is used. Individually, we tell a story. We must take ownership of the narrative. This is an enormous opportunity, and an even greater responsibility. We have leverage — yet most of it goes unused.
Let us help you use it.
Services
Strategy, capability, thought leadership, experience. Choose one — or combine.
Impact strategy for hospitality businesses. We design the systems - sourcing, menu, waste, operations, data collection - that move a venue from good intentions to measurable change. It's the work behind SEM, tailored to your needs, offered to your business.
For restaurant groups, hotels, and opening teams.
Your team are the ones who make it real. We train kitchen and floor to think in systems — where ingredients come from, what waste costs, how a menu carries a message — so the change outlasts us. A team that can converse confidently about what you do, not memorised briefs.
For restaurant teams, hospitality groups, and culinary schools.
Lara has lectured on food systems for the better part of a decade. Keynotes and talks that make the case with rigour and leave a room ready to act.
For conferences, festivals, and universities.
Sometimes the argument is best made on a plate. Lara and George cook privately and host events — SEM's thinking, off-site and edible.
For private clients, brands, and launches.
The proof
SEM is a zero-waste restaurant in Lisbon, built as a working proof of a better food system.
The kitchen doesn't just minimise waste — it eliminates it. Every ingredient that enters the building is used in its entirety. Roots, stems and offcuts are fermented, preserved, smoked or dehydrated into the flavours of future dishes, so the menu is always cooking for now and for later. What can't be eaten is composted on-site and returned to the soil.
The menu itself is dictated by what regenerative farmers are growing, not by a calendar. Micro-seasons shape the offering, not quarterly changes. Wild and foraged ingredients run through every course. The kitchen works to an 80:20 ratio of vegetables to animal protein, sources from local Portuguese producers, and keeps its supply chain over 90% plastic-free. No fish from the sea — only freshwater and invasive species, like Zander.
A restaurant that responds to the needs and offers of the landscape it exists in.
This isn't a statement about the broken food system. It's a prototype of what a working one looks like.
SEM opened in 2021. The name — sem, "without" in Portuguese — traces a direct line to Silo in London, where chef George McLeod trained under Douglas McMaster, and where the world's first zero-waste kitchen was built. Alongside Lara Espirito Santo, whose background is in social and environmental development, George has created a fine-dining experience recognised by the Michelin Guide, awarded One Knife at the 2024 Best Chef Awards, One Sun in the Repsol Guide, and Three Stars at the Sustainable Restaurant Association's Food Made Good Awards.
About
We help hospitality businesses reimagine their relationship with food, people, and the planet. Founded by Lara Espírito Santo — co-founder of SEM and a leader in regenerative restaurant practice — we bring deep industry knowledge and a systems-thinking approach to every project.
Team training, strategic consultancy, or thought leadership: we work with integrity and curiosity to create long-term impact, not short-term fixes.
It isn't a trend. It's a responsibility — and, with the right tools, a source of creativity, resilience, and joy.
Founder — strategy, training, talks
Lara was born in Rio de Janeiro and raised on farms across South America, where she saw the cost of industrial agriculture up close. She spent years in social and environmental development — an MSc from Manchester, fieldwork across the public, private, and non-profit sectors — before a career change into cooking.
She trained at Le Cordon Bleu London in 2015, and found the mission she thought she'd left behind waiting in the kitchen. Food is where the food system is decided. She co-founded SEM to prove it.
Co-founder — kitchen, sourcing, foraging
A chef from New Zealand known for his unique and original approach to regenerative food. Alongside Lara he has built a fine-dining experience that challenges how a restaurant is run — from radical regenerative sourcing to a highly creative zero-waste cuisine.
Before Lisbon, George cooked across New Zealand and the UK, including a pivotal role at Silo in London, the world's first zero-waste restaurant.
In 2024 and 2025 he was awarded One Knife at the Best Chef Awards — recognition of a kitchen that merges high culinary art with environmental conviction.
