In early April, Open Kitchens was launched to provide free, nutritious meals for those in need.
In the wake of the first UK lockdown, this not-for-profit initiative has been helping UK restaurants and food manufacturers to repurpose their kitchens – using furloughed and active staff volunteering their time, and surplus food to cook for vulnerable groups in their local communities.
There are now 53 kitchens across the country that have been cooking and fundraising with Open Kitchens. These include two Michelin star restaurants run by Great British Menu alumnus: Aktar Islam’s Opheem and Alex Bond’s Alchemilla.
More than £400,000 has been raised nationally and more than 220,000 free meals have been produced. The initiative also partners with Fare Share and The Felix Project, national network that redistributes surplus food to charitable causes, meaning that food businesses are not only feeding those in need, but tackling food waste.
Hilton Hotels has also joined Open Kitchens in their fight. The global hotel company has offered its freezers as a storage point between when the meals are produced, and when they are distributed to their beneficiaries plus donating meals. This huge development offers a significant expansion for Open Kitchens, allowing Hilton Hotels to become a nationwide hub that helps them to distribute their meals more widely while also using surplus food to produce meals. To date Hilton London Metropole has cooked and donated over 17,000 meals with no sign of slowing down.
It’s not just the hospitality world that has been getting behind the initiative. Sports, film and TV stars such as Gary Lineker, Vicky McClure, Caitriona Balfe, Sophie Skelton and Penny Lancaster have all pledged their support for Open Kitchens too.
George Ktori runs Yamas, a popular Greek restaurant in Nottingham city centre that was the first to join Open Kitchens.
“When Open Kitchens came to me, I was immediately on board. It’s important to help in these times and feed those who need it most. We’ve got the equipment and the talented chefs, to volunteer their time and cook fresh meals for those who don’t have access to them.”
When the pandemic began, co-founders Alex Grundy and Adam Roberts re-focused their team’s work-from-home agenda and galvanised as many business contacts as possible to spring Open Kitchens into life.
Adam Roberts says “To get the idea off the ground as quickly as possible, we got the word out to as many organisations as we could think of in order to pool resources and the response from all angles so far has been phenomenal. Now we are putting everything we have into raising the funds required to feed those in need.”
Alex Grundy says “We still have so much to do! Now, we’re on the lookout for more local restaurants to join this incredible community effort, opening up their kitchen space to prepare nutritious meals and help us reach the thousands of people who still desperately need our support. Please dig deep and donate what you can.”
Whilst delivering the meals, the Open Kitchens volunteers have seen first-hand how desperately this support is needed across communities… They told us “Liam aged 16 comes from a family of 9. The family struggles day-to-day but right now, things are worse. They have no cooker so we took some meals to the family and explained how the Open Kitchen worked, and that all the food was being cooked by restaurants. Liam said he has never eaten at a restaurant or a pub before. He wanted you all to know your food is amazing and that coronavirus isn’t all that bad as he’s now tasted restaurant food. He said it’s made him realise he wants to work hard in life so he can eat at a restaurant in person.”
You can find out more about Open Kitchens by visiting their website. You can find their just giving page here.
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