We're looking for ways to build a healthy, enjoyable, and sustainable life in a mega city...
We've started with our relationship with food.
Come and join our journey!
We'll get there sooner together...
Food is at the core of our physical health and our joy of life; but also of the damage we cause to our environment. That’s why we’ve started our exploration with food. We’re active in the production as well as consumption of food–our value proposition is understanding both aspects well, repairing/revitalizing the existing links, and creating new ones, as necessary. We design urban farming systems that allow local food production, we maintain urban farms to demonstrate that it is possible to grow food even in the most central locations in the city, and we run restaurant and catering operations that offer healthy and environmentally sustainable food options to complete the cycle. We also organize workshops, events, and art exhibitions to increase awareness on topics that will make our city, and others like it, more livable.
Q: Is EK BİÇ YE İÇ a social enterprise?
A: That’s the hope!
Q: Is EK BİÇ YE İÇ a for-profit business?
A: In a permaculture kind of way…
Q: Is EK BİÇ YE İÇ an agri-business?
A: Yes, indeed.
Q: Is EK BİÇ YE İÇ a cafe/restaurant?
A: Most of the time. (Also offers catering services and meal subscriptions…)
Q: Is EK BİÇ YE İÇ an educational institution?
A: As far as creating and sharing knowledge is concerned, potentially.
Q: Is EK BİÇ YE İÇ a tech startup?
A: It sure is.
Q: Is EK BİÇ YE İÇ a design studio?
A: You nailed it!
Q: Is EK BİÇ YE İÇ an art space?
A: Why not…
No, we are not trying to be confusing on purpose. And it is not that we, ourselves, are confused. We have the singular focus we mentioned above: We want to figure out how to live a healthy, enjoyable, and sustainable life in our big city. But for that, we have to cross some boundaries, break through some walls, look for places that are in-between. We sometimes choose to ignore the formats, rules, conventions, habits, and myths of the neoliberal capitalist system as we know what we are looking for cannot be found there. If it makes you smile to see a weed coming out of a narrow crack on a concrete wall, we trust you understand us.
We use design and technology guided by permaculture principles to create little oases in the city for nature to thrive. When these green dots are multiplied by the thousands and connected together, we will achieve our dream of a city with a vibrant, productive, and sustainable ecosystem. In the meantime, each dot independently is meant to provide sufficient harvest and joy to inspire a small community around it to join our efforts towards the bigger dream…
OUR GOALS
Enjoy the present
Let’s eat good food, drink whatever we please (but of course, responsibly), listen to good music, dance if we’d like to, and have passionate conversations with people who bring the best out of us; always try to stay close to nature–be comforted, nurtured, inspired by it.
Protect our future
Let’s make choices that won’t limit our options in the future; support local production, stop wasteful consumption; care for social- and bio-diversity as without them, there’s no future.
Create a win for all
Let’s make money to be financially sustainable, but not be a fool to think profit has to be the only goal; make sure our team, our suppliers, and our customers draw some real benefits from our business as well as–hopefully–everybody else living in our city (who may or may not be aware of our goals.)
Together, make a difference
Let’s welcome people who want to contribute their time, experience, and/or expertise; always continue to research, experiment, never be afraid of failing; share the learnings from our successes and failures so that we increase the chances of our dreams becoming reality.
OUR ASK
If our goals appeal to you, here are a few ways you can get involved and contribute:
TEAM
We all come from different places, we have different interests and skills; but we know that we want to move forward in the same direction. Our desire is to create a healthy, enjoyable, and sustainable future in our big city for ourselves and for the next generations. We understand that’s not easy, but it’s not impossible either. We are tired of consuming incessantly, we’d like to start producing. We realize that we need to make the right decisions, not necessarily the convenient ones. And for that, we look for consensus that results through questioning the “common sense,” debating the options, and understanding the trade-offs that need to be made. Sometimes we may look like wecare taking a long time to make up our mind; at times, we may look like we are not making much progress, but we believe that the right decision is always more time-efficient than the rushed one…
The list below represents our team members who are currently on our payroll. However, EK BİÇ YE İÇ is clearly the product of a much wider group of people–our former coworkers, many of whom still support us pro bono whenever we need their help, our volunteers, our suppliers, our service providers, and our community…
⭔ Ayten Taş-Hygene Specialist (Taksim)
⭔ Büşra Özışık-Dietician & Catering Manager
⭔ Dilek Yürük-Landscape Architect & Permaculture Designer
⭔ Elif Çakmak-Demi Chef
⭔ Fereshteh Rostami-Architect & Designer
⭔ Gamze Nur Tunç-Demi Chef
⭔ Haro Cumbusyan-Founding Director
⭔ Kasım Özcan-Sous Chef (Taksim)
⭔ Kadir Pabuççu-Sous Chef (Kurtuluş)
⭔ Kevser Üner Öztürk-Agriculture Engineer & Permaculture Designer
⭔ Mehmet Kebabçı-Delivery Specialist
⭔ Metin Günçiçek-Logistics Manager
⭔ Nida Demir-Urban Farmer & Food Stylist
⭔ Onur Erbil-Farmer
⭔ Sema Nur Çağlar-Pastry Chef & Historian
⭔ Serhan Hasdemir-Head Chef
⭔ Şevval Turan-Chef de Partie & Permaculture Designer
⭔ Zehra Deliktaş-Hygene Specialist (Kurtuluş)coworkers
We have some pretty good ideas, and amazing opportunities ahead of us. But we can only fulfill our potential with an extraordinary team because the success of our experiments highly depends on the quality of the execution. If you are an extraordinary chef or an extraordinary farmer or an extraordinary designer–actually, if you are extraordinary in anything–come and talk to us. There is a chance that we may change the world if we come together.