Champions of Change Award 2026

Peggy Chan

Penang

Chef, activist and food systems innovator

Peggy Chan is a chef-restaurateur, food systems strategist and regenerative agriculture advocate whose work bridges hospitality, health and wellness, and climate action across Asia. Over the past two decades, she has played a quiet but influential role in reshaping how the region's food and restaurant communities think about sourcing, reciprocity and our relationship with the environment.

In 2012, Chan founded Grassroots Pantry in Hong Kong – later expanding the group to include Prune, The Alternative Caterer and Nectar – with a mission to address inequities in the food system and promote whole food, plant-based cuisine. Under her leadership, the restaurant became carbon neutral in 2018, and its first sustainability report was recognised by the United Nations ESCAP as a best-practice case study aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals.

Widely regarded as one of the region's most authoritative voices on organic sourcing and systems thinking in foodservice, Chan is frequently invited to advise on food policy, develop educational programmes, and support hospitality businesses in transitioning towards practices that prioritise both human and planetary health. In 2020, she founded Grassroots Initiatives, a consultancy dedicated to helping foodservice professionals embed sustainability in meaningful, actionable ways.

Chan has shared her work publicly through platforms including TEDx, where she spoke as part of the global TED Countdown initiative on food literacy and climate solutions. She is also the author of Provenance: Principles of Plant-Based Cookery, a bilingual cookbook self-published through a successful crowdfunding campaign.

In recent years, Chan has focused on scaling impact beyond individual businesses. She currently leads Zero Foodprint Asia where she works closely with the food and hospitality industry to mobilise funding in support of farmer-led agricultural climate solutions across the region. Her work today centres on stewardship – creating the conditions for long-term change across food systems, hospitality and agriculture.

She asks restaurants and hotels to pledge one per cent of their sales, which goes towards helping farmers to set up regenerative practices like composting and crop rotation. The model is based on California-based non-profit Zero Foodprint (ZFP), whose founders Chan met in 2018.

Now in its fourth year, ZFP Asia has granted more than HKD $8 million (US $1m) to projects in Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Nepal, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines, helping farmers to work more sustainably, while educating restaurants and consumers too.

Named the winner of the Champions of Change Award, as part of Asia's 50 Best Restaurants 2026, Chan hopes to use the grant to raise awareness of the importance of restoring soil health, generating interest in chefs and restaurants and encouraging them to pledge towards ZFP Asia's projects.

Read more about Peggy Chan, winner of the Champions of Change Award, as part of Asia's 50 Best Restaurants 2026.

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