BRCA Newsletter: August 2026

You’re invited: Rethinking Hospitality for Today’s Conscious Traveller

The Sustainable Restaurant Association invites progressive hospitality leaders from across Bali to explore how the islandʼs hospitality businesses can meet the needs of a new generation of conscious travellers while supporting the people, culture and natural systems that make Bali extraordinary.

Event details
Date: Tuesday 15th September
Time: 2 pm to 5 pm
Location: Klymax, Desa Potato Head

The afternoon will open with remarks from Juliane Caillouette Noble, CEO of The Sustainable Restaurant Association, followed by two panel discussions.

Regenerative hospitality in everyday operations.

Oliver TJ of Desa Potato Head, Eelke Plasmeijer and Ray Adriansyah of Locavore NXT, and Joshua Gardner of Begawan Biji will share their experience of running kitchens that aim not only to be sustainable, but regenerative. Theyʼll discuss the challenges theyʼve faced, what has worked and what hasnʼt, and why wider collaboration across Baliʼs hospitality and food systems is essential.

Turning sustainability ambitions into lasting impact.

Rahmi Fajar Harini of Eco Tourism Bali, Dito Prahadi of Locavore NXT and Maitri Fischer of Eco Mantra will discuss how hospitality businesses can turn sustainability goals into structured action. The conversation will cover what to measure, where to focus, and how certification and collaboration can support credible progress.

Whether you’re interested in participating in the gastronomy collaboration event, booking a booth for the closing event, or simply learning more, our team is here to help.

Food & Music Festival, The Collective Wrap: Bali Restaurant Guide Website Launch

Bali Good Food Month will wrap up in style with one-day Food & Music Festival at Suwarga Garden, Mövenpick Resort & Spa Jimbaran. Expect food and beverage booths from some of Bali’s favourite names, live music filling the garden, and hands-on workshops for guests to enjoy. It’s also a big day for BRCA, with the official launch of the Bali Restaurant Guide website happening live at the event.

Suwarga Garden at Mövenpick Resort & Spa Jimbaran
November 14, 2026
15.00 – 22.00

From Fryer to Fuel

Meet the organizations turning Bali’s used cooking oil into biodiesel, education, and change

A green certificate used to be something for the lobby wall. A few photos, a press release, back to business as usual. That’s shifting. Guests are asking more questions, and corporate clients booking events want proof, not just a mention of “sustainability” on the website. And properties that take it seriously tend to run tighter operations too, less waste, lower bills, fewer surprises. Two Bali properties are examples that went through the process the right way, not for a headline, but as a continuation of work already underway.

Green Globe – Movenpick Resort and
Spa Jimbaran

Bali’s restaurants, cafés, and hotels go through a lot of cooking oil, and what happens to it after it’s used matters more than most people realize. Indonesia generates up to 9.72 billion liters of used cooking oil (UCO) every year, roughly 35 liters per person. Yet only about 18.5% of it is properly collected. The rest gets poured down drains, dumped in yards, or worse, illegally filtered and resold as cooking oil. That kind of reuse has been linked to high cholesterol, heart disease, and cancer.

The good news is that UCO doesn’t have to be a problem. Collected and processed the right way, it becomes a valuable feedstock for biofuel, including sustainable aviation fuel, cutting carbon emissions and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. Bali actually has a fairly established ecosystem of groups working on this, and it’s worth knowing who’s who.

Lengis Hijau
Lengis Hijau is where it all started. Founded in 2013 by Caritas Switzerland together with the Denpasar city government, it was Bali’s first non-profit social enterprise built around turning UCO into biodiesel. Through its business arm, PT Bali Hijau Biodiesel, it collects oil from hotels, restaurants, and community waste banks, then processes it into biodiesel under the Ucodiesel B100 brand, along with soap and candles. Its most well-known partnership is with Green School Bali, whose “Bio Bus” fleet runs entirely on this recycled fuel.

Noovoleum
Noovoleum takes a more tech-forward approach through its UCOllect system, which lets households, street vendors, restaurants, and hotels recycle their oil in exchange for a share of the revenue.

As General Manager Jan Kroeckel put it: “Our goal has always been to provide stays that feel warm, memorable, and sincere. Achieving Green Globe certification is a meaningful milestone that reflects our commitment to the island, its culture, and its future.”

Global Sustainable Tourism Council
(GSTC) – Viceroy Bali

It’s ISCC-EU and ISCC-CORSIA certified, and claims to redistribute over 8,000 rupiah per liter of UCO back into the community while cutting 1.28 kg of CO2 per liter collected.

TUKR
TUKR runs a simpler partnership model. Businesses agree on a pickup schedule, TUKR collects the oil, stores and filters it at their warehouse, then exports it to biofuel refineries, where it’s turned into fuel for transportation and electricity generation.

Greenbooks
Yayasan Green Books Indonesia flips the model around. Instead of paying businesses for their oil, it asks them to donate it to fund the Zero Waste School Program, which brings eco-education and waste infrastructure like composting and plastic-free canteens to Bali’s public elementary schools. So far the program has reached almost 20,000 children and cut single-use plastic use in participating schools by over 81%.

For BRCA members, partnering with any of these groups is a straightforward way to turn a waste product into a CSR or ESG win. It keeps oil out of Bali’s drains and waterways, supports the circular economy, and depending on which partner you choose, can help fund local education, support school transport, or bring in some extra revenue for your business.

QUESTION 03

“You spent your university years at IPB, then five years in R&D at Taman Buah Mekarsari, both in Bogor, West Java. So how did Bali even come into the picture? What brought you here, and what made you want to get involved with Island Organics Bali?”

The initial reason was actually quite personal: I wanted to have a child, and Bali felt like a place where I could see that.

Professionally, I was looking for something aligned with my background in horticulture. What’s always interested me isn’t just the science itself, but how communities are built around it. I’ve always been drawn to community-based ecosystems where people are connected by a shared passion. When I came to Bali, I realized many of its businesses and local initiatives are highly community-driven. That’s what eventually led me to Island Organics Bali. Beyond producing vegetables, what attracted me was its community-based approach and the relationships with partner farmers and customers built around genuine community rather than conventional business transactions.

It’s a combination of all three. Curiosity is part of it, chefs inspire many of the ideas, and we’re also solving practical challenges in Bali’s growing conditions. That said, breeding isn’t easy or inexpensive. It requires years of work, significant space, and a lot of patience.

What motivates us differs slightly from conventional commercial breeding. Globally, a lot of crop breeding focuses on making life easier for growers: higher yields, better transportability, longer shelf life, greater uniformity. Those matter, but the end user, the chef or consumer, doesn’t always get the same attention.

We’re interested in a better balance. Longterm, we’d like to develop varieties with exceptional culinary value, better flavour, texture, and eating quality, while still resilient enough to grow well under Bali’s conditions. For now, we do as much R&D as we realistically can, given the regulatory and scale limits smaller farms like ours face compared to large seed companies. We keep experimenting and selecting promising lines to improve what we grow. Hopefully one day we’ll have the capacity to pursue breeding more intensively, not to become a seed company, but to develop varieties truly suited to Bali’s culinary landscape and the people who cook with them.

QUESTION 05

“You were among the early pioneers here, moving away from synthetic chemical pesticides. How difficult was it to establish those natural farming practices at first, and what does managing pests organically actually look like day-to-day on the farm?”

I think the biggest challenge wasn’t actually the farming techniques; it was changing people’s mindset.

In Indonesia, farming is still highly dependent on manual labour, and most farmers have been trained in conventional agriculture since the 1980s. Theyʼre used to solving problems with synthetic fertilizers and chemical pesticides. Natural farming requires a completely different way of thinking, and changing that mindset alone can take years.

When we talk about “farmers” in Indonesia, we’re usually talking about grower experts. They’re highly skilled in the field, but most have never been exposed to the broader food system: market demand, supply chains, pricing, or how restaurants operate. In most Western countries, farming is a bigger enterprise. Here, it’s often seen as exclusive field labor at the end of a long supply chain.

Historically, that connection has almost always been mediated by a middleman. I don’t think middlemen are inherently bad; a good one plays an important role. The problem is when the supply chain becomes long-winded, and farmers and end users stop understanding each other.

A chef may ask for consistency, specific varieties, or a particular flavor profile, while many farmers have never seen how those ingredients are used in a professional kitchen, let alone eaten at the restaurants they supply. So it’s hard for them to understand why one type of romaine is preferred over another, or why harvest timing matters. On the other side, restaurants often don’t understand the realities of farming: seasonality, weather, pests, the limits of growing naturally.

We spend our time translating between both worlds. We help chefs understand farming, and we help farmers understand what creates value in the kitchen: quality, flavor, consistency, culinary application, not just yield. We take the same approach with our partner farmers. We don’t just ask them to grow crops for us. We provide technical support, share knowledge, and guarantee the market, while they build skills beyond cultivation itself. Growing is an art, but farming is a business.

So as Bali’s restaurant scene grows, I don’t think the opportunity is simply to buy more from local farmers. The real opportunity is to rebuild a relationship that never truly existed in the first place. Stronger communication and fair partnership between farms, intermediaries, and kitchens makes the whole food system stronger, for restaurants and farming communities alike.

I believe the most effective way to attract the next generation is to position agriculture as an essential part of Bali’s hospitality industry, rather than treating it as a completely separate sector. Farming shouldn’t sit outside the food and beverage ecosystem – it should be recognised as one of its foundations. Every successful restaurant begins with great ingredients, and every great ingredient begins with a sustainable farm.

As for concerns about shrinking farmland, I’m actually a little less pessimistic than many people. Indonesia has experienced a dramatic decline in the percentage of its population working in agriculture since independence, yet we haven’t experienced widespread food shortages because agricultural productivity has also improved through intensification and better technology.

For me, the bigger conversation isn’t only about producing more food – it’s also about treating food wiser. The end user especially, plays a major role. Reducing waste, valuing seasonal produce, and consuming more efficiently are just as important as increasing production. A resilient food system depends on both sides: farms producing responsibly and consumers appreciating and using those products responsibly.

Bali Tourism Snapshot

Bali 1st Semester January – June 2026

So, how’s Bali doing in the first half of this year? Despite a slow start in 2026, mainly due to geopolitical tensions, Bali is regaining momentum. Foreign arrivals climbed to 605,013 in June, up 4.63% from May’s 578,250, a solid sign that things are picking back up. Australians remained the dominant market, making up nearly 26% of all arrivals in June.

Australian tourists led the first half of 2026 with a 25.06% share, up 6.10% year on year. China, India, the UK and the USA rounded out the top five, with China’s 7.77% growth pushing it into second place and India down to third at 8.9%. South Korea, Russia, France, Malaysia and Singapore completed the top ten. Most source countries saw arrivals dip in H1, but Australia, China, Japan, Taiwan, Canada and Turkey were the exception, all posting growth.

Meanwhile, Colliers has released its Q2 Bali Hotels Report, highlighting insights about Bali’s hotel market. Bali’s hotel market is moving into a more selective, value-driven phase. Visitor arrivals are expected to keep improving through the second half of the year, but growth is uneven now, shaped by global uncertainty, pricier domestic travel and stiffer competition from places like Thailand and Vietnam. Luxury hotel investment keeps expanding regardless, a sign developers still believe in Bali longterm. The winners going forward won’t be the hotels chasing the most guests, but the ones offering something real: wellness, authentic experiences, personalised service.

Source: Colliers, Bali Hotel Quarterly Forecast Report, July 2026.

Room occupancy kept climbing through the first half of 2026. June 2026 came in at 64.87%, slightly up from 64.66% in June 2025, and a 3.71 percentage-point jump from May 2026’s 61.16%.

Guests are staying longer overall in the first half of 2026 versus 2025. In June 2026, length of stay dropped to 2.86 nights, down 0.18 points from May 2026’s 3.04 nights. Year on year, though, it’s still up 0.18 points.

In the first half of 2026, the culinary ecosystem has absorbed global macroeconomic shocks and is stronger and more resilient. This resilience is backed by Bali’s impressive 5.78% Q2 economic growth, with accommodation and food service continuing to lead the islandʼs economy.

Supported by a demographic pivot toward high-spending Asian and Australian markets, the remainder of H2 looks promising for an island that aims to bring 6.5 million foreign visitors this year, with a focus on high-value tourism as opposed to mass transit.

Source: Disparda & BPS Bali

Founders
Dean Keddell – Ginger Moon Restaurants & Author of Our Bali Your Bali – Bali Kita Bali Kamu
Chris Salans – Mozaic
Anthony Syrowatka – Viceroy Hotel, Aperitif, Blossom + others & Gaia Digital Marketing Agency

Board
Weni Ariasty – Manager NOW! Bali & the BRCA treasurer
Ana Dewi – Mövenpick Resort & Spa Jimbaran Bali – HACCP
Peter Dundas – Advisor
Maria Efflin – Secretary/Administrator, BRCA
Naomi Tribuana Festilani – Business and Community Manager BRCA
Rahmi Fajar Harini – Eco Tourism Bali & Sustainability Advisor
Kertawidyawati (Widya) – BRCA President
Maudy Maha – Marketing Advisor
Jeroen Van Overbeek – Social Impakt, Bali Coop & BRCA Vice President
Min Siah – Wheatfields Bakery, Starter Lab – Advisor
Heru Dwi Soesilo – 2080 Burger & an events, branding & marketing guru

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