Katja Gruijters

Katja Gruijters is a Dutch pioneering food designer. She focuses on new opportunities with regard to health, quality, seductiveness, honesty and particularly sustainability.
She has developed food concepts for many companies for over 20 years: from eating and drinking venues to catering companies and manufacturers in the food industry. Her network of creative experts give her the opportunity to work on different kinds of projects, in various shapes and sizes. She has been commissioned by companies in the Netherlands and abroad.

For several years Katja wrote columns for the Dutch trade journal Food magazine.

She is currently writing for the Dutch magazine Vork, a critical magazine about agriculture and the food chain. Her column ‘Food for Thought’ encourages people to rethink their eating behavior.

Katja Gruijters is also involved in education. She has been a founding member of the food design department at the HAS Den Bosch University of Applied Sciences. In 2019, Katja Gruijters became a tutor food design at ARTEZ in Arnhem. She also teaches at the Scuola Politecnica di Design in Milan, Italy.

Katja Gruijters is specifically interested in vegetable proteins. This was also the topic of her graduation at the Design Academy Eindhoven, 22 years ago. Her first job was in a meat factory that also wanted to develop plant based products. At the time, plant based proteins still looked like meat- and often they still do. Katja Gruijters pointed out that plant based ingredients should stand on its own. “We should give green proteins their own identity.”