Olga Grönvall Lund is a Swedish entrepreneur who has worked with food-related projects her whole professional career. She has mainly been active in Stockholm and Berlin but has also hosted events, catered, and done productions in other parts of the world such as Hong Kong, London, Bologna, Copenhagen and Paris to name a few.
In 2019 Olga founded Reformaten – a people’s movement for a new food system where everyone’s winner – humans, animals and nature. The slogan, “Det ska vara lätt att äta rätt”, explains the purpose well; “it must be easy to eat right”.
Throughout her career she had noticed the problems with the current food system through a business perspective, but it wasn’t until last year, when her dad got seriously sick with colon cancer and was hospitalised, that she realised how deeply rooted and systemised this issue really is.
The food served to her dad in the hospital was a menu filled with industrial processed food or red meat. The type of food that is destroying our planet and is proven cancerogenic by WHO – and her own tax money was paying for it.
This was the start of Reformaten. Olga asked herself “why should anyone on this planet even have to eat food that harms their own or the planet’s health?” During months Olga and Marika Berglind Ekman researched and developed the concept of Reformaten. The idea was to translate boring and complicated research reports so that “normal” people outside the food system would understand and gather the voice of the people in a petition to show our leaders that a new system is demanded. The initial intentions have developed and now Reformaten is divided into four parts, which you will be able to read more about in the book.
-Community & Organisation
-Campaigns & Communication
-Conferences
-Education Centre
Food is a question for everyone, since everyone eats. And in the end, everyone will be affected by the climate crisis and food has a vital role to reverse it. The issue with how food is produced, processed and consumed must be discussed together with the people, no matter your title, experiences, education or heritage, everyone needs to be included. Reformaten wants to lift the active citizen rather than the perfect consumer. We have to change the production of food on a system level.
Olga was born in Åland, grew up in Stockholm and became an adult in Berlin. With roots and heritage from Finland, she has what some people would call “sisu” in finnish, Sisu is a Finnish concept described as s toic determination, tenacityof purpose, grit, bravery, resilience, and hardiness and is held by Finns themselves to express their national character. Her grandfathers were forest engineers and farmers and her grandmothers were journalists and a housewives – both with a big passion for high quality food, something Olga grew up with and therefore spent a lot of time in the kitchen from the beginning of her life. Within her family, food has always been something very valuable, something you speak about, something you make together, with respect for nature, animals and the production – a way of celebration!
2012 Olga moved to Berlin with her best friend Kegen Lorentzon, and accidently started what later became her first company Mäckish AB. Mäckish, comes from the Swedish word “macka” (with an -ish), which means sandwich.
It started as a Facebook group, a community for sandwich lovers and later led to an event and food agency where they hosted events in cool restaurants, parties, charity events, they catered, did interactive communication, tv appearances, a Mäckish calendar, lectures – The whole history of the initiative can be found on www.mackish.se
The sandwich became a communication tool, a way to unite people, because no matter if you are poor or rich, a good or bad chef, or even which culture you come from, almost everyone has a nostalgic relation to bread with topping.
Olga’s strongest asset is her energy, creativity, fearlessness, positive vibe, great taste and broad net of contacts. To get in touch with Olga, just drop her an email, she loves to speak with likeminded people.