Camilla Marcus

The Path

Training across Wharton, New York University, and International Culinary Center gave Camilla Marcus a working command of business, service, and kitchen practice. In food businesses, those are not separate tracks; cost, labor, menu, sourcing, and guest experience all meet in the same operating system. Early restaurant work gave the craft its floor-level education. As an undergraduate worker at Dell'anima, Marcus entered hospitality through the pace of service and the close contact between room, kitchen, and guest. As a graduate student worker at Tom Colicchio / Riverpark opening, the lesson was an opening in motion: teams forming habits, systems being tested, and the small decisions that harden into culture. Business Development in restaurants requires fluency in both concept and execution. As director of Business Development at Union Square Hospitality Group, Marcus worked in the space between growth, positioning, and the mechanics of hospitality, where a restaurant’s creative identity has to survive operational pressure. A founder-owned restaurant is where point of view becomes daily practice. At west~bourne in SoHo, New York (from 2018), Marcus built a business whose choices extended beyond the plate, using the everyday meal as the format for a modern, values-led food offering. Independent restaurant advocacy became part of the same trade work as the restaurant landscape changed. As leadership team member at Independent Restaurant Coalition (from 2020) and co-founder at ROAR (from 2020), Marcus worked within conversations about the future of independent restaurants and the workers, owners, and systems that sustain them. Today, Camilla is founder of west~bourne direct-to-consumer food brand / regenerative, carbon-neutral provisions, cookbook author of My Regenerative Kitchen, member of Fast Company Impact Council, and member of Google Food Lab. The line of work moves from restaurant floor to pantry shelf, from individual meal to broader food system, without leaving the operating questions of hospitality behind.

The Work Today

Regenerative, carbon-neutral provisions for the modern home define the current west~bourne work. In that frame, the kitchen is not only a site of convenience or appetite; it is a repeatable place of purchasing, cooking, and sourcing choices. The terms matter because they set the operating brief: provisions that address pleasure and responsibility in the same product language. The contemporary home kitchen often has to reconcile speed, standards, and constraints. Marcus’s work with west~bourne addresses that tension by making food for daily use while keeping attention on how ingredients are grown, sourced, and understood. The craft question is alignment: whether a product can function in ordinary home cooking and still carry a larger food-systems position. A cookbook turns a food philosophy into instruction.

Signature

A restaurant signature works when it carries the house position without needing explanation. Camilla Marcus is associated with west~bourne's hearty “mushreuben” sandwich and My Regenerative Kitchen. The “mushreuben” holds a recognizable sandwich format while pointing to west~bourne’s interest in comfort, rethinking, and values-led eating. My Regenerative Kitchen gives the same set of concerns a broader working format, moving from restaurant and brand identity into home cooking.

In Their Words “I have been interested in cooking from a very young age and knew early on that I wanted to go to culinary school after college. When I was younger, I would go to the kitchen and chat with the team every time we ate out for dinner.” “I wanted to embrace conscious capitalism in the food world — to run a business that stood for more and harnessed how vastly food can indeed change our planet.”

Acclaim

Recognition for food work can mark more than kitchen output; it can also identify influence across business model, advocacy, and systems thinking. Camilla's honors include The Next 1000, Food & Drink (2021), PureWow 100 (2018), and Most Creative People in Business. Together, they place her work across hospitality, advocacy, business, and regenerative thinking.