Fermentation is transformation, powerful tool, lets use it
The oldest transformation process humanity has ever known
The most sustainable, safest preservation method on earth. It solves the problems of harvest surplus and waste. It creates complex flavours, builds nutritional value naturally, and turns ordinary vegetables into living, beneficial products for humans.
Fermentation sits at the centre of the conversations that matter right now across many sectors - gut health, food waste, circular economy, regenerative farming, and food innovation.
Hands-on fermentation workshops, demonstrations, and bespoke experiences for private groups, cookery schools, festivals, retreats, and corporate teams. Educational, social, and rooted in gut-health and life-skills, designed to leave people positively changed. Each session is tailored to your audience, your space, and what you most want them to walk away with.
Advisory and strategic work for organisations, institutions and food businesses - covering commercial fermentation, food waste and surplus, circular economy, sustainability strategy, and regenerative food systems. Currently developing a DEFRA-backed project integrating fermentation into regenerative farming cycles
Standalone talks and live demonstrations for festivals, conferences, food events, corporate away-days, and panels. Bringing fermentation as fun or serious as it can be, practical tool into the rooms that shape what comes next - from food policy and sustainability forums to private brand events, cultural institutions, and curated industry gatherings.
Who is Elena →
Born in Norway, raised in Eastern Europe, learning preservation and fermentation from her grandparents. Over a decade at London's Borough Market alongside Tony Booth, supplying the UK's finest restaurants - Nobu, The Ivy, The Fat Duck, Brown's Hotel - and learning flavour and ingredient education directly from Gennaro Contaldo, Antonio Carluccio, Angela Hartnett, Jamie Oliver and many other incredible chefs.
In 2014 she founded her own fine food hub in London, raising the bar for independent food retail, importing directly from Sicilian growers and building one of London's most loyal food communities. That hub became the foundation of her commercial fermentation work: in 2017 she founded London Fermentary, turning the shop's surplus into living, beneficial fermented products. She built fully commercial production systems - scalable, safe and consistent, with SALSA and BRCGS certifications - proving traditional lacto-fermentation can work at the highest industry standard.
That work became Fermary: Great Taste award-winning retail products stocked at Harrods, Fortnum & Mason, Selfridges, Whole Foods, Daylesford Organics, and around 200 stockists nationwide, with her ferments on the menu at Firmdale Hotels and Harrods restaurants.
2026
“Elena Deminska’s experience as a founder and food entrepreneur is featured in Hilary Cottam OBE’s 2025 book, The Work We Need, which brings together the lived experience of workers, founders and business leaders to reimagine work for the twenty-first century. Drawing on more than two decades across London’s food industry, Elena has founded Puntarelle & Co, London Fermentary and FERMARY - businesses shaped by craft, community, fermentation and a deeper understanding of how meaningful work can create value beyond profit.”
—Hillary Cottam, OBE — author of Radical Help and The Work We Need (2025). One of the UK's most respected thinkers on social systems, the future of work, and the redesign of public services. Former government advisor and TED speaker, whose work shapes policy conversations across Whitehall, the European Commission, universities and major foundations.
Let's work together.
Available for talks, demos, workshops, consultancy and strategic programmes. I'll review your message and get back to you as soon as I can.