It’s not just a food truck
You may see a food truck. We see a mobile kitchen.
If you see some exceptionally happy smiles on the faces of our team recently, it may be because we have recently received enough funding from Christchurch Casino and KiwiGaming to enable the purchase and fit-out of our mobile kitchen.
Some months ago, Christchurch City Mission offered to sell us a food truck that was surplus to their requirements at a price well below cost.
So why does Kairos need a food truck?
We don’t. Our clever team had other ideas. The recent funding approvals will allow to not only purchase the truck, but to fit it for purpose.
Hot meals at Kairos free Store
Our work in the community has shown us that visitors to our Free Store are often limited on what they can take because they do not have cooking facilities in their own homes. An on-site kitchen will allow us to prepare hot meals with the ingredients rescued from our suppliers, making our resources more usable for those we serve. This will also increase our ability to serve homeless and other underprivileged people with a hot meal for the hungry, especially important in the winter months.
Cooking classes in the community
We have also found that many people using our services can’t take advantage of food on offer because they don’t know how to use it. We hope to be able to use the kitchen as a community area for lessons on preparing and storing food.
Civil Defense Resourcing
Kairos is honoured to be a point of contact for Civil Defence in the event of a local emergency. Our food warehouse and food bank connections dovetail with Civil Defence’s need to reach out to local communities with emergency food supplies. Our new mobile kitchen unit will allow Kairos, in partnership with Civil Defence, to provide emergency cooked meals to communities.
Increasing the Longevity of Perishable Donations
We’ll be able to increase the longevity of donated short-dated or perishable stock by cooking it into soups, stews and other meals that can then be frozen and distributed to the 25 food banks across Christchurch that Kairos Food supplies. This will further reduce food waste while giving a new lease of life to fruit, vegetables and other perishables that would not normally last much longer while providing additional resources for food banks across the city.
Reduce carbon emissions
By making more efficient use of rescued and donated food by increasing their longevity, we thereby reduce food waste going into landfill and the decrease the carbon footprint in our environment.
Many thanks to Christchurch City Mission, Christchurch Casino and KiwiGaming for giving us the resources to bring our dream of a mobile kitchen to life. Watch this space as we fit-out and launch our food truck mobile kitchen!
