BACKGROUND
One of the many impacts of the corona crises on the food system has been the surplus of large-scale household products generally destined to commercial and institutional kitchens. At the same time, with the temporary closure of food kitchens and other food serving initiatives, charities struggle to find ways to be able to provide food to the increasing demand from people in need, many of whom don’t even have access to a kitchen. In average, charities went from collecting 270 kg of food per visit to the Food Bank (pre-corona times) to 350-400kg per visit now.
PILOT PROJECT
To be able to make the most out of these large-scale household products and at the same time, facilitate the redistribution of surplus food through our partner organizations, the Food Bank in Norway is launching a pilot project called “Matsentralen Kitchen” (MSK) in collaboration with the organization Unikum. The goal of MSK is to create healthy and nutritious ready-made meals that are suitable for distribution -both in portion packs (about 500 gr) and family packs (1.5-2 kg). By being able to redistribute serving portions, partner organizations can reach out to even more people in need, while at the same time supporting a healthier diet for people in need, whether they have access to a kitchen or not.
The goal of the pilot is to have two production days a week from April to June, with a weekly volume of 500-600 servings of food. After the pilot, the goal is to upscale to at least 1000 servings per week.
