The WASTE NOT kitchen
Soup. It’s the ultimate comfort food – and now, thanks to a new initiative, it’s bringing comfort to those who need it most.
As co-founder of Farro food stores, Janene Draper was all too aware of the issue of food waste. Every year Kiwis send 157,389 tonnes of food to landfill – and Janene didn’t want her own stores continuing to feed into that grim statistic. So she hit on an idea that would solve two problems at once – using up meat that would otherwise be wasted, and providing wholesome meals for those in no position to cook nutritious meals for themselves.
Janene had initially been thinking of starting a soup kitchen, but then her sister Leysa Ross told her about a school fundraising initiative she was involved in, providing cans of food for Women’s Refuge. While it was an admirable effort, Janene reckoned she could do better than that, telling Leysa, “God, I’d love to be making something nutritious using the meat we’ve got.”
And that’s how the seeds of Waste-not Kitchen – of which Leysa is now general manager - were sown. The registered charity produces delicious, top-notch soups made with New Zealand-raised meat and fresh veg which are sold in Farro stores around
Auckland. For every soup sold, Waste-not will donate one to families at Women’s Refuge as well as to young people involved in the I Have a Dream Charitable Trust. Farro is a sponsor, providing its surplus meat; Turners and Growers are donating their ‘ugly veg’; and Davis Foods has come on board with dry ingredients.
Janene approached Andrew Sparrow, creative director of Tried & True Design in Auckland, for help in ensuring that the quality Farro is known for, remained at the fore.
“We were thinking something very brown paper-ish-looking. But he said ‘you don’t want people to feel you’re not making something of quality. The soup tastes good, does good. At retail level we have to make it look good as well.’ He blew us away with the packaging.”
The soups are based on favourite family recipes – and the bottom line is not just deliciousness, but also only using ingredients genuinely destined for landfill. Which is why there are, for now, only meat-based options and a limited range of flavours.
“With some of our cuts, we don’t have a lot of wastage. If we don’t have something [a flavour], that’s a positive. It means we’ve managed the supply chain incredibly well, that there is no waste.. Something like lamb has a much longer shelf life than chicken. We get very little lamb so we can make very little of our Moroccan Lamb Soup. Some soups we have higher quantities of than other soups. We’re not just going to make soup for the sake of it. But we definitely want to get other retailers on board.”
As well as extending the meal range –
“We’re already working on the idea of pasta bakes and meat dishes for summer” - there are other plans quietly bubbling away in the Waste-not Kitchen.
“Our big mission next year is to start our own kitchen employing women who have been through Women’s Refuge and give them that step up in their lives. We want to ‘feed them’ through the retail system, those that excel. That is our big picture. At the moment it’s ‘let’s just get it off the ranks, get our soups going’. Then we can start to build on that.”
Waste-not all began with one simple idea – but it’s an idea that keeps on giving. And, just as they’re transforming ugly veg into delicious soups, they’re turning ‘problems’ into beautiful solutions. Take, for example, an early challenge the pair faced: of finding a big enough kitchen space.
The answer came in the shape of the Attainable Trust. “They employ people with disabilities. They’ve got a big kitchen. What was fantastic is this fitted in with our mission, to use surplus meat to nourish those in need. These people are mainly adults, they don’t live with their parents any more or their parents need a break during the day. They’re living by themselves and often not eating properly. So the Attainable Trust feeds them twice a day when they work. So we can give some of our food to them too.”
Waste-not Kitchen soups are available at Farro food stores.