Our team and partners
Get to now the people behind fermentastic, we hand-picked these partners for their craft, character, and real Brussels flavour. Each one adds a different side of fermentation to the tour, from wild beer to chocolate and beyond.
Yannick Schandené / Fermenthings
Yannick Schandené has been quietly shaping Brussels’ modern fermentation scene since 2017, when he opened a first fermented-food shop in Jette, years before fermentation became everyone’s favourite buzzword.
Today, he runs Fermenthings at BE-HERE, where it’s part shop, part workshop, part playground for microbes. Yannick is also behind the Urban Fermentory/Lab (opened September 2020), exploring circular fermentation, like transforming spent brewery grains into shoyu and miso—and expanding into a larger space in 2024. That mix of craft, curiosity, and low-waste thinking is exactly why he’s one of our Brussels pioneers, and a key stop on the tour.
Valérie De Katelaere / Baazar Trottoir.
Founded in 2019, Bazaar Trottoir offers an alternative look at Brussels, Antwerp, and Ostend through human-scale guided walks. Moving beyond typical tourist routes, their team of 15 ambassadors explores themes like street art, social innovation, and neighborhood life, focusing on the authentic stories and invisible dynamics that shape the city from the pavement up.
The organization views the city as a living organism, emphasizing sustainability and circular ecosystems. This makes the partnership with Fermentastic a perfect match; by visiting pioneers like La Source or BE-HERE, they use fermentation as a lens to understand urban transformation, showing how collaboration and patience drive both biological processes and city growth.
Mathieu Huygens / La Source Beer Co
Mathieu Huygens is part of the newer Brussels beer story: less nostalgia, more immediacy. In 2019, he opened La Source Beer Co at BE-HERE, built around one simple flex, beer served straight from the tanks. Five vats are fitted with taps, so what you drink is about as close to “just brewed” as Brussels gets.
What makes Mathieu a perfect fit for our tour is the mindset behind the freshness: La Source has leaned into a more low-impact, “full-circle” approach, right down to choices like packaging in cans to cut transport weight. It’s modern, technical, and unpretentious, exactly the kind of place where Brussels’ fermentation culture keeps evolving.
Maxime Pliester / Concept Chocolat.
Maxime Pliester is the kind of Brussels chocolatier who invites you behind the curtain. At Concept Chocolate in Schaerbeek, he’s built a participatory atelier where visitors don’t just buy pralines—they learn how chocolate is made, taste the craft up close, and discover what happens before chocolate becomes chocolate.
What makes Maxime a perfect match for our fermentation story is his respect for origins and side-streams: Concept Chocolate is part of the Cacao-Trace programme, and he’s openly curious about elements like cocoa pod pulp—proof that flavour and sustainability can share the same starting point.
Gastronomy enthusiast ? Tour operator expert in food experience ? Tourism professional in search of sustainable experience ? Join our tour !