400,000 reasons we love our Community Kitchen

A huge food relief milestone

Since our Community Kitchen was opened in 2014, Chef Grant has celebrated some incredible milestones, but the biggest yet is that together with an army of volunteers he has turned 160,000kgs of potential food waste into 400,000 ready-to-eat meals. 

The Community Kitchen is a hive of activity each day of the week with Chef Grant coordinating teams of up to six volunteers daily. Together, they prepare, cook, package and freeze their meals on a weekly basis so that they are ready for distribution the following week through our six branches. 

By far, Grant’s favourite meal to have come out of the Community Kitchen was braised lamb shoulder with black barley, tri coloured quinoa, roasted vegetables and winter broth. 

Firm customer favourites include lasagne, bangers and mash and spaghetti bolognaise to name a few. 

Chef Grant says “I am incredibly passionate about cooking and food waste, the variety of meals we create in the Community Kitchen are a direct reflection of the produce we rescue from landfill. Along with individual and corporate volunteers we aim to make simplistic hearty meals following the KISS system.” 

There have been many volunteers both corporate and individual who have assisted Grant along the way, but the Golden Girls in particular are a standout. The Golden Girls have a pool of about 14 ladies who come in on a regular basis in groups of five or six at a time to assist Chef Grant. 

Some of the Golden Girls are into their eighth year of volunteering and all look forward to their day in the Kitchen. 

“One of the best and positive things I find about the Community Kitchen is that we save all the food we use for the meals from landfill. The other thing we love is that we have been doing a bit of rotation with working in the kitchen and have also been out on the floor at the checkouts. Seeing the impact Foodbank WA makes to the people who need firsthand is incredible.” said Robyn. 

“The product we produce is quality and we are proud of it.” said Ros 

Collectively, the Golden Girls says that Chef Grant does a marvellous job with creating meals out of what is donated and that he’s great to work with. The ladies say his enthusiasm is contagious! 

Congratulations Grant!