Impact
Hospitality
should widen
the table.
I believe a hospitality venue should have a meaningful relationship with the community around it. That relationship should reach beyond the people who can afford to come through the door.
A Plate for London
More than 35,000 people fed in the first year.
I had been working on the idea for A Plate for London for a couple of years before the pandemic, while planning to open a building in Brixton. The building never opened. When the pandemic arrived in 2020, I launched A Plate for London anyway.
We raised money to buy food, got chefs back into kitchens and gave the meals they cooked to people who needed them. That was the immediate work through the first spring and summer of the pandemic.
As we kept going, I saw that other charities already had closer relationships with people in need. They had their own kitchens, their own systems and a better understanding of who needed support. The most useful thing we could do was raise money and help them continue that work. By the end of the year, that had become our focus.
From food to skills
Giving a family food can meet an immediate need.
Helping young people learn to cook, understand nutrition and manage a food budget can give them skills they will use throughout their lives. That is the thinking behind Fisher Club, the next step we are developing from A Plate for London.
Fisher Club
The intention is to make Fisher Club part of every new venue we open, with chefs from the venue mentoring young people from the surrounding area. Cooking, nutrition and budgeting would become a practical connection between the venue and its neighbours.
A Plate for London taught me to look at what was actually useful to a community and to adapt the work around that. Fisher Club takes that lesson forward.