The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Saturday
BRAVE NEW WORLD
Celebrating the local food heroes building new relationships with their communities. By Madeleine Howell
What does a Leiths-trained caterer do when parties are cancelled? Entrepreneur Ayesha Pakravan, 26, switched from party platters to batch-cooking for those in need. Through not-for-profit venture Vital Meals, she has since delivered 10,000 free, nutritious meals.
Pakravan only founded her event catering company, The Plattery, last year, quitting her job as an estate agent to create customised party spreads from her registered kitchen at home in Wandsworth. In February, when the first rumblings of coronavirus in Britain put paid to a thriving first year, she initially allocated 10 per cent of her profits from that month towards the scheme.
She started out preparing 10 meals a day, delivered in her own car. “I didn’t want to sit at home and do nothing,” she says. Funded by further investment out of her own pocket, a crowdfunding effort of £25,537 raised via her GoFundMe page and generously donated produce, Vital Meals now provides around 100 meals a day, with three other trained volunteer chefs and seven volunteer delivery drivers serving postcodes across London. “There’s real community spirit among people who want to use their time for good,” says Pakravan. Vital Meals operates on an altruistic basis. Pakravan is not paying herself, and funnels every penny raised into it while living on savings.
Recipients include the elderly, high risk, the homeless, single parents, those on low incomes or Universal Credit, and those unable to access food “for whatever reason, financial or medical” – including NHS staff and key workers. As well as lasagnes and casseroles, she offers child-friendly mushroom risottos and tomato pasta dishes for those unable to get cooked meals due to school closures. “They’re free, but hot and nourishing, made with love, garnished with parsley and cheffy flourishes. We’re doing ‘taco Tuesdays’ to keep it jolly – eating is about survival, but also about making isolation less lonely.”
To find her first recipients, she posted on mutual aid groups on Facebook, spoke to NHS carers who contacted her on behalf of patients, and worked with Peabody housing association. Pakravan was also inspired by her mother, who has arthritis and struggles to chop vegetables or open cans, to help vulnerable
‘Eating is about survival, but also about making isolation less lonely’
people turn government food packages into healthy meals suitable for freezing, making them go further as part of her parcel-to-plate Diversion Service. “It’s for anyone who is struggling to prepare meals with the supplies they do have,” she explains.
Now restrictions on gatherings are lifting, The Plattery has started trading again, offering grazing spreads and cooked meals to paying customers too – but Pakravan will continue to allocate profits back into the Vital Meals fund. “It’s been a career epiphany,” she says. “I’ve discovered such a need for food. People were going hungry precoronavirus. This has put a magnifying glass on the problem – we need to continue to do something about it, not just move on. I can’t turn my back.”
For more information, visit vitalmeals. org and theplattery.com