As food waste has been a huge problem in this world, I am excited to introduce to you Keep Bañana, a zero-waste vegan café in Munich fighting against just that.
About Keep Bañana
Keep Bañana is a small café in Munich selling vegan and sugar-free banana soft-serve, gluten-free banana bread as well as good coffee.
Especially as a vegan, you might think: "Why buy banana ice cream at a café if I can easily make it at home so much cheaper?“.
It’s true that it is easy to make nice cream at home, however I think it’s worthwhile supporting Keep Bañana as their ice cream is made from saved bananas which would have otherwise been thrown away. This is either due to their shape or their level of ripeness.
Unfortunately, many supermarkets refuse to sell bananas that are too bend, too straight or simply turned brown even tough they are still completely fine on the inside. This obviously leads to a huge waste of food. Furthermore, bananas come from far away which involves transportation and so on, which makes it even more wasteful to sort them out.
By converting those bananas to soft serve, Keep Bañana saves them from landing in the trash and therefore does a lot for the environment. Additionally, the ice cream comes in an eatable waffle cup and with an eatable spoon. So, this café is truly zero-waste and absolutely worth being supported.
Keep Bañana is conveniently located at the Sendlinger Tor not far from Marienplatz. When passing, it is impossible to miss it as signs are advertising ice cream´s awesomeness and the café's bright yellow walls are a real eye-catcher.
They offer regular banana ice cream containing only banana and a daily changing additional flavour. You can either get just one or a mix of both, regardless of the size you choose. And depending on the size you can add a certain amount of yummy vegan toppings as well! Toppings include chocolate sauce, choco chips, nut brittles, dried or fresh fruit and cacao nibs.
Or what about soft serve on gluten-free, vegan banana bread made by the amazing gluten-free bakery "Echt Jetzt" in Munich?
If you want to enjoy a cup of coffee with it, you can either drink it there served in a mug or do take-away with a re-cup which basically means you pay a small fee for a tumbler which you can return at all participating coffee shops in Munich. I'm not sure, but probably you can bring your own tumbler as well. For milk coffees they have an oat milk option.
Menu:
My Experience
I tried their regular sized ice cream with two flavors: the normal banana one and peanut, the extra flavor of that particular day. For toppings I chose chocolate drops, hazelnut brittles and chocolate sauce.
The ice cream tasted exactly like plain nice cream. I think most vegans make nice cream at home a lot, so the taste isn’t anything special. Actually was even a little disappointed because I thought the consistency would be like actual soft serve, but it just had the shape. However, it was delicious anyways and I do think that it is nice to be able to enjoy nice cream when out and about in the city and I love not having to clean the blender afterwards myself. Also it feels nice to support a business that helps preventing food waste.
I really liked the waffle and the cookie spoon! The spoon comes in two flavours and I think it is so innovative! I wish more ice cream shops would swap plastic spoons for these. Also, as the spoon is hard enough so that you can enjoy the ice cream without worrying about the spoon softening. But it is still soft enough that you can easily eat it. Only children and elderly people might have problems chewing it.
The cappuccino I had was good too, I would just prefer a soy milk option because I like it better in coffee. But that is just my personal taste.
All in all, I absolutely love the idea behind Keep Bañana and I will go there again to support it. And I would love to try the banana bread with soft serve.
What do you think about the concept? Let me know in the comments!
Further thoughts
I believe it would be AMAZING if there were much more cafés and restaurants offering food which would otherwise be thrown away.
I know that Günes Seyfarth is doing just that at her „Community Kitchen“ in Neuperlach (Munich). Her restaurant uses food sourced from wholesale traders and farmers that exceeded its best-before date or looks strange and would be ending up in the trash even though it is still perfectly eatable.
As processing ingredients can extend the best-before date, the amount of food-waste can be drastically reduced. However, according to Günes Seyfarth, only a handful of such restaurants exists even though this practice is perfectly legal.
In my opinion this is a pity as food waste is a really problem especially in the western world and should be combated more. But I guess the most effective way would be if each of us changed our own behavior, isn’t it? This means not buying more food than we are actually able to eat before it goes bad, not over-loading our plates, eating up all left-overs, choose recipes according to leftover ingredients in our fridge and sharing or switching food we won’t eat with other people.
I'm curious, what are your ideas for reducing food waste? Are you going to change anything?
I am definitely going to plan my meals better in advance so that there won’t be left-over ingredients I have no use for. Also writing a memo on the fridge which foods need the get used up asap, because that way I won’t forget about them.
Keep Bañana
Price Span: 3,20€ - 5,50€
Opening Hours:
Tuesday - Friday: 10:00 - 18:00
Saturday: 12:00 - 19:00
Closed on Sundays, Mondays
Address: Sendlinger Str. 49, 80331 München
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keep.banana/