One place in Copenhagen that really impressed me was the Reffen street food market. It’s actually more than just a food market, it also has space for start-ups, innovation, and creativity. The market opened a year ago and is still in its early stages. The idea is to create low-cost space for creative workshops and start-ups, cultural experiences and innovative projects that attract and inspire both locals and tourists. All stalls have to follow a “reduce and reuse” dogma. They use compostable food service products, try to reduce food wastes, use organic products, free-range, and local ingredients. They also have to sort their waste so it can be reused to the greatest extent possible.

I liked it because it looked like a “start-up” operation and not like some of the fancy start-up operations that we see here in Silicon Valley, funded by venture capitalists. Reffen has more than 50 start-ups of food stalls with total international flavors, bars, and creative workshops. The area is an old industrial area that is sort of being recycled itself. But at the same time, a large part of it sits right on the harbor area, so it’s got great potential.

We went here for lunch and we found foods from around the world. We purchased food from multiple places and shared it and it was all very good. I would also add that while it might look like these are ‘fast food’ operations, they really are not. We had to wait a bit for our foods to get cooked. So while it looks very simple, the people here seem to work hard and take their food quality very seriously. It seems like a great opportunity for someone who really wants to get into business but really doesn’t have much financing or experience. And the people were all super friendly and didn’t hesitate to recommend a competitor if that was what we were describing we were looking for. It was a really good experience, food and otherwise.

The first photo is the entrance to the Reffen Market. It wasn’t all shipping containers but it was mostly shipping containers. But once inside, they were painted up and much more presentable.

The Reffen Coffee Roastery is in the second photo. It was a cool and breezy day and we got here at the very early part of lunch time, so it wasn’t very crowded yet.

Satay Copenhagen was Malaysian food and their shipping container was done so nice that you hardly noticed that it was a shipping container restaurant.

Baobab sold African food and beverages from various parts of Africa. Notice that their tables are for standing and eating and are 55-gallon drums with wire-spool-ends table tops.

The last photo is an example of a couple of places that were not in shipping containers. There was also a variety of alternative to shipping container restaurants.