Bean
There
Festival
Workshops, lectures, tastings, parties, and experiments. In 2026, the Food Design Playground will be the home of a large-scale, joyful, and radically playful exploration: How can beans—the most underrated heroes of our food future—spark our imagination and make us fall in love with them?
Tickets include lunch.
The Sexy Sprout Show on March 22 was a sold-out success!
The next edition is on June 12–13–14: Beans & Bloom. Can’t make it then? Save the date for the Punk Peas Harvest Festival on October 2–3–4 and the Fart Fest on
January 8–9–10, 2027!
BEANS & BLOOM
Four seasons, four chances to reflect, savor, laugh, and discover all the possibilities that arise when you take a simple bean seriously.
BEANS & BLOOM – Summer Edition (June 12–14, 2026)
Beans, but with a twist. Three days of food, art, and imagination. Beans & Bloom lets you see, touch, and experience beans like never before.
Beans aren't just a side dish.
Beans are a start.
During BEAN THERE (done that) – Beans & Bloom, Food Design Playground transforms into a vibrant world where beans take center stage for three days. No dry lectures or finger-wagging—just a sensory experience brimming with flavor, art, conversation, and unexpected encounters.
Here, beans are being reinvented—through imagination, play, and shared meals.
From an intimate lunch to a lively festival day: each day has its own unique character, but together they form a single story. You can choose just one day… or immerse yourself completely.
Be the first to hear all the news!
Food Design Playground as Bean Brainwash Playground
From June 12 to 14, a diverse group of chefs, artists, farmers, writers, creators, and growers will be experimenting with beans. And you’ll get to taste, play, and marvel along with them. Together, we’ll explore and celebrate everything beans are (and could be).
Forget everything you think you know about beans!
This isn't just some measly bowl of lentil soup.
These are vibrant, quirky days filled with flavor, art, play, and a touch of chaos.
What to expect:
Friday, June 12
• 🫘 Bean Archive Lunch – by Studio H & Juwan Beyers from Cape Town
Saturday, June 13
• 🥣 The Hummus Academy Lunch – by Umayya Abu-Hanna and Mary Ann Juraisy
Sunday, June 14. BEANS & BLOOM Festival
• ✉️ Bean Mail Workshop – Let’s make a nostalgic bean salad together
• 🌿 Spice Up Your Beans Za’atar Workshop – learn all about za’atar and the stories behind chickpeas
• 🥤 Bean Bar – milkshakes, soft-serve ice cream, and other summer drinks made with beans!
• 🎥 Food Videography Workshop – Stop-Motion with Beans
• 🌸 Aquafaba flower meringues – a feast for the eyes, and what do they say?
• 🥄 Horny hummus workshop – yes, it’s exactly what you’re hoping it is.
• 🌱 Flowering Beans and Permaculture Workshop – Get your hands in the soil and be amazed!
• 🎧 Audio tasting – listen while you eat.
• 🖼 Edible art & food design – beans as a question, a statement, and a snack.
• 🔮 The Oral Oracle – an installation where your fate is determined by beans.
• 💃 Bean Disco – because why shouldn’t a butter bean be able to dance?
For whom?
For people who love food and new ideas.
For those who prefer to experience things rather than just consume them.
For curious minds, open eyes, and slightly rebellious voices.
For anyone looking for a Sunday that feels completely different from the usual brunch-and-latte routine.
You don't have to be a bean expert.
You don't even have to like beans.
You just need to keep an open mind.
📍 Food Design Playground – in the heart of Dordrecht (15 minutes from Rotterdam)
🕥 Sunday, June 14, 10:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
🍲 Lunch included
🎟 This is a small-scale event, so tickets are limited
This is not a trade show.
No market.
Not your typical food fair.
This is Beans & Bloom.
And yes—you’ll return home a different person than when you arrived.
Read more about the program here
Been there, done that - BEANS and BLOOM
Beans, but with a twist. Three days of food, art, and imagination. Beans & Bloom lets you see, touch, and experience beans like never before. – Friday: Lunch experience, Bean Archives: The Exchange – Saturday: Lunch experience and wine tasting, Hummus Academy – Sunday: Festival day! – Or: go all in and enjoy the whole weekend
Check out some of the Bonenbeesten participating in "Bean there (done that)" below—and new inspiring people are joining all the time.
Yuri Veul
In the cookbook *Heilig Boontje*, you can already find surprising recipes for chickpea polenta, falafel pancakes, and even Black Forest meringues made with that magical chickpea liquid.
During Bean There, Yuri Veul shares his passion for beans and stop-motion videos. A stop-motion video consists of a series of photos that, when played in sequence, create a smooth video. He gives you a behind-the-scenes look and teaches you the ins and outs of food videography. Let those beans swing!
Hannerie Visser
Studio H is an award-winning food design studio based in Cape Town. Operating at the intersection of food, design, and culture, the studio has established itself as a leading voice in food design in South Africa, with work featured internationally at festivals, exhibitions, and museums. In February, they hosted a Trend Seminar Lunch for Li Edelkoort in Cape Town; now you can experience their food design right here in Dordrecht! Join us for the Bean Archives Lunch on Friday, June 12, a living library of South African beans. On the festival day, Sunday, June 14, you can also shell your own beans with Hannerie and send them off using her Bean Mail design.
Photo Credit: Retha Ferguson
Juwan Beyers
Juwan Beyers Food Design is a Cape Town-based practice that operates at the intersection of food, design, and experience. Through a multidisciplinary approach, Juwan creates carefully curated food experiences that position food as a multisensory medium for storytelling, engagement, and connection. With a strong focus on materiality and craftsmanship, Juwan approaches food as both medium and message, designing experiences that are as thoughtful as they are memorable. Together with Hannerie Visser, he is creating the Bean Archives Lunch on Friday, June 12, and on the festival day, Sunday, June 14, you can try out his tableware made from bean packaging and taste his grandmother’s secret recipe for bean soup.
Photo Credit: Paris Brummer
Inés Lauber
Inés Lauber is an artist-in-residence at the Food Design Playground this summer. Studio Inés Lauber is a conceptual food and design studio based in Berlin and Beelitz-Heilstaetten, Germany, since 2012. The studio raises awareness about sustainability, seasonality, locality, and the preservation of biodiversity through storytelling and conceptual design. The studio blurs the boundaries between the forgotten and the modern, the traditional and the new, food and art. Inés is bringing a playful, interactive project to Beans & Bloom. Inspired by the iconic milk bars of the 1950s and the bold nostalgia of classic milk campaigns, she is developing a Bean Bar where beans and peas are transformed into milkshakes, ice cream, and other surprising treats. The Bean Bar isn’t just about tasting—you’ll step into a playful world full of bean glamour.
The wild farmer
Horney Hummus Workshop. De Wilde Boerin is a platform for food, pleasure, and everything that stimulates your body and senses. The founder is behavioral scientist and food pioneerLinette Mak. Through food, she promotes sexual health. Come make some "horney" hummus at the workshop on March 22. Instagram: @dewildeboerin.
Marije Vogelzang
Marije Vogelzang is one of the pioneers in the field of food design, the founder of Food Design Playground, and one of the festival’s organizers. She has several food experiences in store for you. A genuine ORAL ORACLE—a surprisingly accurate oracle that uses beans to reveal your fate. You can also lie back on a lounger and experience her audio tasting, where you listen to your tongue speaking to you and sample tiny bites from a pill bottle. She’ll be giving a lecture, and her National Tap Water Tasting is ready and waiting for you!
Sylvia Adventure
Silent Garden workshop. Sylvia Avontuur is a permaculture designer, urban gardening instructor, and lecturer in corporate social responsibility at an international business school in Amsterdam. She leads the Urban Permaculture Design Course (PDC) program for Cityplot and serves as Haarlem’s Climate Mayor.
For Sylvia, a garden is not an end product, but a process. She collaborates with creative professionals, experts, and those whose voices are often overlooked to create gardens that are more than just beautiful—they are meaningful, educational, and political.
Elisabeth Weerman
Elisabeth Weerman is a co-founder of The Nice Company, develops ice cream recipes, and writes about ultra-processed foods. She is also one of the festival’s organizers. At the first edition, Elisabeth led an interactive session where participants soaked their feet in dried beans. A Brainwash - SPA. A bean spa where, using the same techniques the food industry applies to fast food, you received a tasty brainwash for your mind and your taste buds!
Nadia Zerouali
Nadia Zerouali is a writer, host, and TV chef with a deep passion for Mediterranean and Arabic cuisine. She is known for her cookbooks, TV appearances, and culinary projects that blend flavor and culture.
Besara Workshop
An ode to simplicity: split peas, garlic, cumin, olive oil, water, time, and tranquility. In this workshop, you’ll discover how this Moroccan classic—nutritious, comforting, and hearty—is more than just soup: it’s a shared bowl, a morning ritual, pure energy in its most humble form. Photo: Senna Hansen
Merijn Tol
Merijn Tol is a culinary journalist and cookbook author who runs her supper club, Cafe Mazahar, cooking on location either alone or with others. She writes about food as culture, as a story, and as a reflection of the times. With a keen eye for both flavor and context, she connects gastronomy to social and historical themes. She writes for publications such as Delicious magazine, where, in addition to sharing delicious recipes, she explores the deeper layers of dishes and food cultures. She also does this on her Substack, Cooking the Med. Additionally, she consults on and develops menus for hospitality projects that are close to her heart.
Merijn is known for her approachable yet substantive style: curious, precise, and always seeking to uncover what lies beneath the surface and how we can use that to foster connection.
Jasper Udink ten Cate
Jasper Udink ten Cate is a creative chef and culinary concept developer. He is known for his playful, exploratory approach to food, which blends gastronomy, design, and storytelling. At Bean there, you can admire his beautiful ceramic beans, and he will give an interactive talk about his taste museum and take you on edible bean adventures.
Terri Salminen
Terri Salminen is a passionate culinary professional who works according to regenerative principles and uses food as a creative and exploratory medium. She moves between cooking, education, research, and storytelling, and develops new ways to bring knowledge, taste, and imagination together. Terri is a culinary artist in residence at Food Design Playground, where she works on, among other things, the Perfume Pantry: a sensory collection of foods and scents where ingredients, memories, and imagination come together.
Valerie Kuster
Valerie Kuster, founder of Rotterdam’s first rooftop restaurant, Op Het Dak (2013–2021), is an entrepreneur and chef with a passion for nature who brings extensive experience to the culinary and hospitality industries. She leads workshops, develops culinary programs, and cooks with locally sourced, seasonal ingredients. Learn all about tempeh made from locally grown beans during her workshop.
Jennifer Berry
Jennifer Berry is a Los Angeles native who spent a decade crafting cocktails at some of Los Angeles’ most well-known bars. She has taken her passion for hospitality and bartending to a more personal level through intimate workshops that combine cocktail techniques with unique themes and ingredients.
Are you there?
"Bean There (Done That)" takes place four times a year:
March 22 - Sexy Sprout Show (Sold Out)
June 12–13–14 - Beans&Bloom
October 2–3–4 – Punk Peas Harvest
January 8–9–10, 2027 - Fart Fest
Been there, done that - BEANS and BLOOM
Beans, but with a twist. Three days of food, art, and imagination. Beans & Bloom lets you see, touch, and experience beans like never before. – Friday: Lunch experience, Bean Archives: The Exchange – Saturday: Lunch experience and wine tasting, Hummus Academy – Sunday: Festival day! – Or: go all in and enjoy the whole weekend
