TONY’S FOOD SAVING FLEET
TONY’S Community Kitchen has welcomed two important new members to the team with Andrew Bullen from Precinct Urban Planning announced as the charity’s fifth board director and a new delivery van arriving from Peter Roberts Honda.
Mr Bullen said he and his wife Fleur had been passionate supporters of Tony’s Kitchen since Tony Hurle started out providing a barbecue for the homeless in Clewley Park four nights a week.
“We decided to purchase their first van for them last year to help with all the food pick ups, before this Tony was forced to load up his little Corolla with as much food as he could fit,” he said.
“With a van he was able to collect more food and therefore help more people.”
Mr Hurle said he was beyond excited to see the Tony’s Community Kitchen fleet grow to three vehicles in less than 12 months.
“The new van is much bigger and will make our weekly trips to Food Bank in Morningside much easier as they can load entire pallets into the back now, whereas we used to have to manually unload and load the pallets into our smaller van,” he said.
“The smaller van will still be used to pick up boxes of food from Aldi in Highfields and North Point every day, we’re just able to do everything much more efficiently now which means more food for our clients and less food in landfill.”
With nearly 2000 visits each month, Mr Hurle estimates Tony’s Kitchen saves a huge amount of safe and edible food from entering landfill each year.
“This is food that can no longer be sold as it’s past its best-before date, but it’s all still perfectly fresh, nutritious and safe for human consumption,” he said.
“We’ve got big plans for the future, and we want to be able to help more people not just here in Toowoomba City but across the region in smaller towns who need our support too.”