Super kitchen opens in Watford to offer free meals

A holiday hunger super kitchen - based on an Indian concept, has been opened in Watford, and will serve children at risk of holiday hunger this October.

It will allow large quantities of healthy, hot meals to be cooked and delivered to holiday clubs in the Watford and London area at a much larger and more cost-effective scale than individual providers.
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The kitchen is set up by two Indian charities - GMSP and Akshaya Patra foundations.

The charities are looking for schools to work with so that they can offer low-cost meals to pupils during term time.

Bhawani Singh Shekhawat, Akshaya Patra UK chief executive said: “We’ll be ready to work with schools from next spring and will be able to produce meals for 5,000 children in schools across the Watford and London area.

“We’re inviting schools to join us for tours of our state of the art, new kitchen. We can talk about the importance of healthy food and the science behind our cooking processes that mean we’re able to produce 5,000 meals packed full of nutrition and delivered to children every day.

“We’ll offer these tours virtually at first and then in person once Covid-19 restrictions have lifted.”

The kitchen is based on a concept that began in Bangalore and has expanded to cater for 1.8m children in 19,000 schools in India every day.

The issue of holiday hunger issue in the UK, highlighted by England footballer Marcus Rashford, is what drove the charities to bring the kitchen model from India to the UK.