Introducing Our Kitchen on the Isle of Thanet

I had an idea! (actually I had this idea several years ago.) I have had a lot of ideas since then but this idea has hung around. It has had to wait until the moment was right. I have shared it with a lot of people but they used to get that shutting down look half way through my description. Not now. Now tv, radio, MPs, councillors, meetings want to know about it. It is a classic example of entrepreneurship. This idea uses resources and systems that are in place already and makes more of them.

In order to help families with children feed themselves well at a price they can afford I suggest we ask the school meals service team to work two hours extra each day. Some of them will have childcare or other caring duties, or other jobs to go onto but we only need a couple from each team to work the extra hours. They could, for example , make a very large pan full of cottage pie mix and a very large pan of mashed potato. Our team of local volunteers would then take over. They know how to work hygienically and accurately. They would weigh, pack, label and date the cooled food. Some packs would be available as fresh produce and some would be quick frozen for later sale.

The staff would be paid for their extra hours from the sale of the food. The school should be paid for its use of gas/electricity/water. The volunteers should not do this work at any cost to themselves so should be able to charge for their travel expenses.

These meals would be available for sale at an affordable price to the families in that school. Our Kitchen CIC would put in a large chest freezer to store them and an honesty box system would operate. There would have to be a kind and reasonable limit to the number of meals each family could buy each week. These meals would only be intended for normal family usage.

The food we would use would come from Our Kitchen stock so would be best priced right from the start.

WE have our first school interested.

This difficulty is too big for charities to sort out. We need more good ideas!