Creative entrepreneur Matt Reid is known for breaking moulds, challenging the status quo, and turning his out-of-the-box ideas into successful–and sustainable–ventures. His latest project, KIN, is an exciting new food hall and delivery concept that aims to transform the way we eat. As it launches this month in Taikoo Place, we sat down for a chat with the restaurateur, businessman and environmentalist.
How—and what—do you think we will be eating, ten years from now?
Regenerative, locally grown food I hope!
You’ve lived all over the world, from Barbados to the UK to Shanghai, and your career spans everything from film to food. What is the most off-the-wall, unexpected life decision you’ve ever made, and what did it teach you?
At 23, I decided to move from London to Beijing, without ever having visited China prior to that. I left a comfortable life in the UK and that opened my eyes to so many things – a different culture, language, and a completely different level of hardship.
KIN Food Halls is set to change the way we order, deliver and consume meals in Hong Kong. Was there a “eureka” moment when you came up with the concept, or did it evolve over time?
I really didn’t like the idea of getting a meal that had just been sitting on the back of a moped, with little information, if any, about where the ingredients had come from. As a restaurant operator myself I knew from first-hand experience that the food industry is in crisis. The eureka moment was seeing that we had to change the system, not simply participate in it.
Why did you decide to launch KIN in Taikoo Place?
We knew we could make an impact in a compact, vertical ecosystem like Taikoo Place. It’s a great opportunity to launch in a community that has 50,000 people in a single location. Taikoo Place is the central business district of the future.
Vegan, lacto-ovo vegetarian or omnivore?
Gluten and lactose-free omnivore. With a conscious consumption of everything.
If I could banish one thing entirely from the world it would be…
Industrial food. Today’s increased demand for food for convenience is hurting the world we live in. Single use plastic packaging, monoculture farming and a whole bunch of other issues are things that we have to address. We need to be replenishing what we take from the Earth so we leave a world behind that’s suitable for our kids to live in.
If I could make one thing happen in the world, with immediate effect, it would be…
Eliminate world hunger.
CBD: Fad or Future?
Future—because it’s been around forever.
Name the visionary thinker you would most like to meet (living or dead).
The Israeli intellectual and historian Yuval Noah Harari who wrote 21 Lessons for the 21st Century and Sapiens and Homo Deus. Many of my business ideas have been led by insights drawn from Harari’s writing. I love the concept that to imagine the future, you need to understand our past.
My happy place is…
Hanging out in my daughter’s nursery.
My go-to lunch pick at KIN is…
Sustainable sushi off our kaiten (conveyor belt).