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Chef

Guillaume Gomez

Head chef at the Elysée Palace for 25 years, Guillaume Gomez has served French presidents and other world leaders. Now an ambassador for French gastronomy and know-how, his mission is to defend and promote the entire food service industry, both in France and internationally. Above all, he advocates a humanistic approach to food.

A 360° activist, the chef has always supported and valued the work of people with disabilities, welcoming some of them into his kitchens at the Elysée Palace and supporting the Gourm’hand plate trophy. So it was with great enthusiasm that he accepted the role of patron of the restaurant Le Reflet restaurant in Paris, which enables “ordinary” and “extraordinary” people to work hand in hand.

Guillaume Gomez is also patron of the Hophopfood associationwhich aims to combat food waste and help people in precarious situations. He is also founder of the Institut d’Excellence Culinaire de l’Ecole de Félix in Madagascar, which trains Madagascan chefs on the model of the French diploma CAP cuisine, enabling them to find stable, well-paid work and escape poverty.

Association

HopHopFood

Founded in 2016 by three citizens, HopHopFood, an association recognized as being in the public interest, fights against precariousness and food waste at the same time, through digital tools (app). It’s the solidarity anti-waste!

In 2018, it launched Europe’s first platform for food donations between private individuals.

In 2020, it completed its platform with donations of unsold goods from professionals, becoming for them a possible alternative to the cut-price applications of start-ups.

HopHopFood is aimed at people in “precarious situations”, who have a roof over their heads but too little “left to live on” to feed themselves properly with 3 meals a day (in France 17 M, 25% of the population, often invisible).

Beneficiaries are validated in precarious situations by access codes given by recognized institutions that suppoort them. It’s food aid 2.0, digital, with no logistics and no need for volunteers to collect or distribute food (no greenhouse gas emissions). Beneficiaries play an active role, picking up their free food directly and autonomously.

Donations (takeaway baskets or ready-to-eat meals) allow distribution actors (supermarkets and artisans), collective catering (central kitchens, school cafeterias, nursing homes, hospitals, etc.), and commercial sectors (hotels and restaurants) to reduce waste while valuing their donations at 60% of their value (tax deductions).

HopHopFood already has a dozen branches in France and, by early 2025, will enable 18,000 people to eat for free. Since 2018 the equivalent of 7 million meals has been donated, saving 3,000 tons of CO².

Chef and ambassador Guillaume Gomez is the national patron, joined by local patrons such as Sébastien Richard and Ludovic Turac in Marseille, and Mathieu Viannay, Gregory Cuilleron iand Christian Têtedoie in Lyon.

To their website

Association

La Tablée des Chefs

Founded in Canada in 2002 by chef Jean-François Archambault, La Tablée des Chefs’ mission is to combat food insecurity and food waste, as well as to educate young people in the culinary arts. The association, which combines gastronomy and solidarity, has spread to Mexico and especially France, under the direction of Vincent Brassart and the patronage of chef Guillaume Gomez. Mobilizing chefs and professionals around committed and innovative initiatives, the association’s actions are divided into two parts:

  • Feeding: Thanks to programs such as food recovery and Cuisines Solidaires, La Tablée mobilizes chefs and students from catering schools to prepare and distribute meals to food aid associations, helping to combat precariousness.
  • Education: Les Brigades Culinaires and Cuisine Ton Avenir (Cook your future) are workshops for young people aged 11 to 18, led by chefs, to learn how to cook healthily and economically. The aim is to educate future generations, some of whom are experiencing social difficulties, about healthy, sustainable eating and to help them achieve self-sufficiency in food.

To their website

Association

Les Extraordinaires

Founder of the association Les ExtraordinairesFlore Lelièvre created Le Reflet in Nantes. This unique place“where you feel good and differences evaporate” was born during her interior design studies, inspired by her older brother, who has Down’s Syndrome. His dream was “to enable people with disabilities to live like ‘everyone else’, but also (…) to enable society to meet these extraordinary people“. The success of this first inclusive restaurant in France quickly spread beyond local borders, giving rise to a second Parisian establishment in 2019, sponsored by chef Guillaume Gomez. The principle: that all positions, from kitchens to dining rooms, are accessible so that “ordinary” and “extraordinary” employees can work hand in hand. Every detail, from the design of the plates to the layout of the spaces, has been thought through to facilitate inclusion and create a welcoming environment for all. The objective? That Le Reflet be a restaurant like any other, where customers come for the pleasure of the table and not to do a good deed.

The Les Extraordinaires association is also behind the media initiative Chefs Extraordinaireswhich features videos of recipes and tips presented by chefs with mental or cognitive disabilities, interviews and celebrity guests for chef duos, and the Les Brigades Extraordinaires collective, which supports project leaders and federates inclusive restaurants.

To their website

Other engaged people

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