Half a million hungry Kiwi kids being fed by Eat My Lunch

Thursday, 17 August 2017

Five-year-old Jade Haak from Wellington's Kahurangi School eats lunch provided by Eat My Lunch.

Half a million Kiwi kids who would normally go without lunch are now being fed by social enterprise Eat My Lunch.

Auckland woman Lisa King and award-winning chef Michael Meredith started the business in 2015 working out of a residential kitchen.

Founders Michael Meredith and Lisa King have plans to expand into the South Island as soon as they're able.

For every lunch purchased through Eat My Lunch, it provides a free lunch for a child who needs it.

Two years on and they have hit a milestone, with 1670 lunches being delivered every school day to children in need from 48 low decile schools in Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington.

Eat My Lunch co-founder and award-winning chef Michael Meredith said in 2015 the business wouldn't be able to make more than 200 lunches a day.

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King said she was overwhelmed with how far the business had come in just two years.

'We met our three year forecast in the first 12 weeks,' she said.

'It started out of our house and when Michael came on board he said we wouldn't be able to do more than 200 lunches a day. Now we have a goal of 25,000 a day.'

King said the South Island, especially Christchurch, was on the horizon but the business was still small and it would take time.

In the short term, Eat My Lunch will launch Eat My Dinner, delivering ready-to-heat meals to homes in Auckland to provide more lunches to kids. There are currently 30 schools on a waiting list in the North Island.

Many New Zealand businesses have jumped on board to help out with about 250,000 lunch orders come from businesses using Eat My Lunch for conferences, meetings and daily lunches.

Pump and Lego have partnered with King and Meredith to provide kids with water and toys.

Brinks Chicken supplies 80kg of free chicken every week, and L'affare coffee in Wellington gives 2kg of free coffee every week and rent-free space in Wellington for a commercial kitchen.

Child Poverty Action Group spokeswoman Jeni Cartwright said there was definitely a place for charities like Eat My Lunch but they should not replace the role of government assistance in helping the poorest New Zealanders.

'Charities necessarily meet an urgent need, but we need serious and rapidly implemented policy change in the areas of welfare and housing in order to have a long term effect on reducing poverty in New Zealand,' she said.

'Charity has its place but we don't have a business model for helping the elderly - elderly people get universal assistance after the age of 65, and things like meals on wheels are funded.

'It's important people know they are helping and doing good but charity has it's place, and government has a place.'

King said there was no secret Eat My Lunch made a profit.

'We employ 27 staff and are a commercial business, we have to be sustainable.' she said.

Eat My Lunch also posted an open letter to Parliament on Facebook this week, asking MPs to sign up to Eat My Lunch to help stop child poverty.

But the letter was met with some resistance from the public. One woman said: '… To see them dismiss the work of advocates for legislative and policy change with an open letter that suggests MPs needn't bother with 'pesky bills' is deeply disappointing.'

'The framing of this open letter is both unhelpful and disrespectful to people working on systemic, transformative and long-lasting solutions to poverty, because that does happen at a policy level.'

King said it was never their intention to negate the role of government in ending child poverty, the post was to raise awareness around the issue.