team
Jessica Waite | CEO
Jessica declared herself a vegetarian at the age of seven and began exploring a vegan diet at 15. While there were short returns to vegetarianism along the way, the call of the plant-based diet was strong for many reasons. She has now been plant-based for most of 22 years and is a proponent of the diet and the way of life. Jessica aims to remain a pragmatic advocate in an effort to appeal to a broad audience. That said, she is a lover of animals and intends to spend her life working to reduce human and animal suffering.
Jessica majored in psychology and biology at California State University San Marcos and planned to study medicine. After interning for several years at a local hospital she became alarmed at the current state of healthcare and became determined to be part of the solution in a preventative way. In 2012 Jessica paired up with Davin Waite, a creative chef with a love for cooking with veggies. The two co-founded the restaurants Wrench & Rodent Seabasstropub and The Whet Noodle. Both restaurants feature many vegan menu items and focus on sourcing locally and minimizing waste through total utilization. In 2017, while attending the California Resource Recovery Association in San Diego, Jessica wrote the first business plan for a restaurant with a zero waste ethos and a fully plant based menu. Two and a half years later the first location of The Plot was opened in South Oceanside.
Jessica recently earned an MBA in General Management at Pepperdine University. She is President of the local non-profit Berry Good Food and works within her community to promote local and responsible food sourcing. Her goal is to build a business based on the ideals of conscious capitalism; a strategy that will benefit all stakeholders; partners, customers and the environment.
Davin Waite | Executive Chef
Davin Waite began his career as a sushi chef at Ichiban in Santa Barbara under the instruction of Chef Hiro, a local legend and master of sushi as well as French and Italian Cuisine. Back in North San Diego County Davin continued on to Cafe Japengo, and in 2003 he returned to his hometown of Oceanside to co-found The Fish Joint. With his next project Davin created a restaurant in his own image; scrappy, irreverent and constantly pushing boundaries. Wrench & Rodent Seabasstropub began as a pop-up but quickly became a destination for those who appreciated Waite’s creative and delicious approach to minimizing waste and celebrating local and sustainably sourced products.
Waite aims to stay in a state of consistent innovation and creation in order to teach and inspire. Davin has taught sustainable cooking techniques to elementary students, culinary students and city officials. He has spoken on panels on topics including using underutilized species and sourcing from local farmers. In 2017 Davin was a keynote speaker at the California Resource and Recovery Conference, where he broke down a whole fish on stage to demonstrate how each part can be used to make delicious menu items, down to the ribs, skin and marrow. Waite’s menus reflect his values as he continues to evolve as a chef and as an advocate.
Waite has continued his culinary evolution in the direction of plant based cuisine. He gives veggies the respect they deserve in a playful and creative way, and welcomes the challenge of creating stunning and delicious culinary offerings, with plants.
Chef Christopher Co-Founder
Chef Christopher | Co-Founder
Having been doing this for a very long time, this is an opportunity to again for me to experiment, learn and play with food, doing things in a different way, thinking a different way in regards to the what and how to do something, using sometimes new and different ingredients to create flavors and textures that are inviting, flavorful and just plain fantastic. Bringing plant items, different types of proteins to the center of the plate, allowing them to be the main attraction, not just a great side dish, but front and center. Making something so good and flavorful that not only were you happy eating it, but you never missed the “No animals were hurt in the preparation of this item” fact.
For myself, it’s about creating a better eating life style as I mature, a healthier “Make it taste better and I will eat it anytime” mentality and hopefully sharing that dining option with others.
I have always been about the food, the whole best product available, using the best ingredients, producing the best and sharing that with others. I am also at the age where my hope is that I haven’t yet had the best years of my life, that they are still to come and having seen what happens to others and myself as we age and progress through life, there are certain things that we should and need to focus on and a large part of that has to do with what we are putting into our own bodies. To say that we are what we eat is a true statement, but there is more to it than that, not just what we eat and how that affects our body as we age, the rest of the process as well.
How to use the whole of anything, from root to stem in food, figuring out a way to not to throw away, using everything, not just producing, reusing, repurposing, figuring out how to be better, everyday.
Samantha Andrade FOH Manager
Marissa Johnson FOH Manager
Hannah Guthman Brand + Social Guru