Carolina Colagreco is a lawyer and notary and a flavor seeker. A passion that has a long family history: “In our house in La Plata, my grandfather had a garden and so did my father. When we met to eat, we were always curious to know where each product came from and we liked to get to know the producers, their way of working.”
For this reason, the idea of having his own gastronomic project was always on his mind. So it was that she, together with her husband, Rafael Lima, and her brother Mauro – the renowned and prestigious chef, owner of three Michelin stars with his restaurant Mirazur in France – decided in 2016 to create Carne, a hamburger project. .
The entrepreneurship was born out of “the desire” to do something together. “As I am a lawyer, I started helping Mauro read contracts. Although I am six years older than him and he is the youngest in the family and the only boy (and the most pampered), we have children of similar ages who get along great and there is a very special bond.
One day, Mauro came with the idea of making this hamburger project and here we are“, he says one Tuesday afternoon at a table at Carne in the Dot shopping center in Buenos Aires.
Today the number of stores is completed with the headquarters in La Plata and branches in Belgium and Saudi Arabia. Eight years after the beginning, total production is around 15/16 thousand hamburgers per month and they will soon reach the shelves of some gourmet stores.
In the daily, the trio divides the roles: Mauro in charge of the gastronomic concept; Rafael manages the commercial and business part, and Carolina is “the brand voice, the spiritual life” in charge of Carne lab, the space for debate and dissemination.
The hamburger as a tool for social impact
-What was the objective you set with Carne?
-We wanted to make an impact with issues that call us to action, such as the environment, the challenges of climate change, soil desertification and the loss generated by poor food distribution.
We wanted to understand gastronomy in a broad sense, where the producer and the agricultural and livestock industry were included.which has to provide many solutions. It is part of the problem and, for that reason, it is part of the solution. Working on the social and environmental impact it generates is a key and the tool to solve this problem.
-And why did you choose to work with hamburgers, associated with fast food and junk food?
-Everything is related. We love hamburgers, it is, above all, delicious food. But fundamentally because Meat aims for mass consumption and the hamburger product is.
We chose a disruptive name as an invitation to debate that we wanted to put on the table to rethink the current paradigm of mass food production. The burger was appropriate because There can be an honest, respectful and collaborative food industry with social and environmental issues. and with the health of the people who consume.
Carolina Colagreco: “We love hamburgers.” / Photo Juano Tessone-So the care of the product is essential for you.
-It is much more than care. She is a militant burger. Of the highest quality, made with excellent raw materials. We choose all producers for their quality of raw materials and know-how in social responsibility.
In the Colagreco family we have a mania for luxury, well understood and We wanted to reflect it by expanding or reinterpreting that concept of luxury.. In this case, luxury is eating a quality hamburger, but we also have the luxury of being part of a positive impact or change.
That’s why we say that every time you eat you decide the world you want to live in. Because individual lives are valuable and powerful. It goes beyond offering a hamburger. We are the only burger chain certified as “B Corps.”
-What are the protocols that “B companies” must follow?
-Certification B measures the environmental and social impact that one says one generates. It is a very rigorous process and going through it is good. One of the requirements is to have two years of activity to certify. We were born in 2016 and certified in 18 because we were born with that spirit.
Complete equipment. Mauro Colagreco and his wife Julia; Carolina Colagreco and Rafael Lima. / Courtesy-How is the selection of raw material suppliers?
-We have our permanent network of suppliers that is the component of the restaurant’s menu. In addition to excellent products, we look for social and environmental responsibility; If it is also organic or biodynamic it also helps. You always visit the place where it is produced.
It is a long-term construction, a bond that was made.
Today we use meat that is one hundred percent fed with natural grasslands, without agrochemicals and without grain supplementation.
-And in the specific case of meat, how was the work?
-When we started, making sure the cow was grass-fed or feedlot was a job. I was lucky enough to speak with a refrigerator who was a gem and they accepted the challenge. The reality was that at that time pasture and feedlot cows entered the meat processing plant through the same door because there was no differentiated demand. Now a little more.
We were building trust and traceability. Because grass-fed meat can have a grainy finish and you had to know if it was 10, 20 or 60 percent. Know if that pasture is fumigated…
We did all that work for eight years because We have the love, commitment and passion of the producers.
Today we have meat that is one hundred percent traced from regenerative livestock, with natural pastures, without agrochemicals and without grain supplementation at any time, except when the protocols admit it, which is when the animal is in danger due to a drought.
Mauro Colagreco at the La Plata Headquarters. / Courtesy-What differences are there between traditional and regenerative agriculture and livestock?
-Regenerative has a lot of advantages over traditional one. And not to mention the feedlot, which for me is not a form of production, neither sustainable nor sustainable.
Regenerative livestock farming has advantages, first of all from health: It is a much leaner meat, the production is measuredthere is certification.
Behind that comes the carbon credit business (N.de R.: financial instruments that represent the reduction or elimination of greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere) because the fields can be measured and certified from an environmental point of view. The best-worked fields receive carbon credits.
It is based on the principle that carbon is life in the place it needs to be, which is in the soil. And for this to happen you have to help nature with that troop rotation. The most interesting thing about the concept is that puts into debate a form of productionthere are no ethical questions.
It seems outrageous to me that we have come this far due to a matter of time and cost. But we forget about all the costs that are externalized: health, groundwater contamination, desertification. Regenerative agriculture proposes to stop breaking down and more importantly, regenerate fields treated with traditional agriculture.
Regular ketchup is made with tomato concentrate brought from China. Ours is with fresh, organic tomato, without coloring or additives.
-And how did you come to work with these regenerative livestock producers?
-I contacted some members of the Grassland Alliance of ranchers who work with the Aves de Argentina Association to preserve the habitat of birds; The Argentine grassland biome is unique in the world. AND That’s where the luxury of eating meat with a unique biome comes from.
Everything that gives it an individuality and personality to preserve the grasslands; More than producers of cows, they are producers of grass, because it favors the life of the pasture. Of that alliance of 600 thousand hectares of producers, about 400 thousand are natural grasslands.
And Nicolás Borenstein, a meat producer and sommelier very involved with the alliance, makes the bridge with these producers.
Mauro Colagreco, with the tomatoes they use for hamburgers. / Courtesy-They also developed special work with the tomatoes they use.
-Yes, eight years ago we brought 25 varieties of tomatoes with pollinated seeds to the biocultural corridor of La Plata in an open gesture to the importance of biodiversity. We started a debate and decided what we wanted to have with each ingredient.
Also recover the profession of the baker, which is in extinction. That’s why it seemed to us that making artisanal bread, in addition to being exquisite, fresh, having no additives, and working with organic flour, was about telling the cultural significance and social impact of the transmission of crafts from generation to generation.
Which is also enriched because each generation adds experience and culture.
In La Plata, baking is from the city, when we were in Mendoza we developed a local bakery because the objective is to positively impact each community. For Dot there is a CABA supplier with the same recipe and quality standard.
The same with potatoes, we have a potato plant that produces exclusively for Meat.
-Do you have your own recipe for the ketchup you use?
-Yes, we are also proud of ketchup; We wanted our own recipe and we went out to find someone who could produce it. I contacted Guillermo Frusto, from Pampa Gourmet, I went to see him and it just so happened that he was a fan of the hamburger and of my brother.
And he tells me ‘ketchup is not made with tomatoes’, it was made with a tomato concentrate that was imported from China.
We wanted it with fresh tomatoes, and that’s why we have a ketchup that could be made because Guillermo fell in love with the project and it is one hundred percent fresh, organic tomatoes, without coloring or additives. We achieve this product and impact the way it produces. A world opened up to him, because today he has all the seasonings certified organic, he grows the tomatoes for Meat.
The same thing happened in the refrigerator. Many are formatted by the industry but when you give them the correct information they change the chip.
-At the end of September you are going to give a talk at the Slow Food network’s Mother Earth expo that takes place in Turin, Italy.
-Yes, they invited me to participate in a workshop on meat, and on the other hand I am going to present the belief system of our company, which we summarize in the phrase “Every time you eat you decide the world in which you want to live.” .
