BACKGROUND & CONTEXT:

Stella Artois relies a lot on the consumption in restaurants, as it's now 40% of its business volume. That's why the brand has always supported Brazilian gastronomy. But the deeper the brand went into this territory, the more apparent the contradiction became - a brand with female DNA supporting a market that continually excludes women.

We looked for data to help us build a strategy, but there weren't many available. Although we knew the scenario was challenging, gender inequality was so significant that there was no official data on the reality of women in professional kitchens.

So we took the first step: financing a national survey to deeply analyze the gender issue in the Brazilian gastronomic market, in partnership with the Ipsos Institute. The research consisted of an Ad Hoc study, in-depth interviews, and ethnographies. The information came from thousands of women and men from all regions of Brazil, who occupy different positions within the hierarchy of professional kitchens. We discovered women's main discomforts, such as:

- Lack of credit (1 in each 3 say it’s more expensive to endeavour as a woman)

- Lack of visibility (1 in 3 is not even listened by male chefs)

- Lack of access to professional education (50% can't afford tuitions)

CREATIVE CHALLENGE:

Numbers are cold and have no appeal, even more so in a country experiencing a growing wave of denialist thinking. It was necessary to transform the data into something palatable. Just like food.

SOLUTION:

We transformed the research in more than numbers. Each piece of data was a much needed ingredient to change the taste and the reality of women in gastronomy.

EXECUTION:

We created "Uncomfortable Food": the data of gender disparity becoming dishes of activism. More than 100 Brazilian female chefs were presented with the official research results and invited to translate the data into dishes for the "Uncomfortable Food" circuit.

The data became ingredients for creating unique dishes, which engaged over 100 restaurants led by women in a gastronomy circuit, redefining the concept of comfort food.

For more credit, for instance, Katia Barbosa created the Sea of Gold. For visibility, Bela Gil created Rice & Shine. Many other dishes were created, such as Cookies&Scream (to expose moral abuse) and Ladder of Mansplaining (to expose male chauvinism).

While the chefs presented their discomforts in their restaurants, Stella Artois provided $60 million in credit to female entrepreneurs and +1000 gastronomy scholarships.