The team were thrilled to celebrate a whole year of service as Refettorio OzHarvest turned one in February. Our lunchtime guests are welcomed four days a week to enjoy a free nourishing meal, made with love and served with a smile, we also added a Saturday brunch service to offer weekend food relief.
Many guests in need find us through the kindness of strangers and we’re so happy to provide a safe space where guests can relax and rejuvenate, they often tell us they leave feeling human again.
To help keep our doors open, our Pay It Forward Dinners are now open to the wider community every Thursday, along with private venue hire and events. Thanks to our amazing chef friends, we were able to host two sell-out Guest Chef at Ref dinner series – helping to raise valuable funds to keep our doors open. Our heartfelt thanks go to:
Orazio D’Elia / Andy Evans / Claire Van Vuuren / Colin Fassnidge / Matt Moran /Shimpei Hatanaka / Julian Cincotta / Trisha Greentree / Amanda Fuller and Corey Costelloe for the kitchen take-overs.
We love sharing what we do with the local community, from joining in City of Sydney’s Crown Street Bake Sale to welcoming the Channel 7 team at Better Homes & Gardens, who spent the day with us for a segment of their show.
Our much-loved Food Truck is now six years old and is very busy in Sydney with corporate events – which help keep our wheels turning as every booking allows us to visit one of our charity partners to serve up a hot free lunch to a community in need.
We’re constantly innovating and creating new ways to help feed people in need and were so excited to roll-out OzHarvest Catering, which is now available in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. Our incredible chefs have created a range of gourmet zero-waste inspired menus that can be delivered direct. We loved adding purpose and delicious food to some great partner and private events this year.
Both our food truck and catering help to raise valuable funds so we can feed more people in need. We regularly receive heart-warming feedback from the food truck community lunches from the charities we support.
OzHarvest has established an innovation and social enterprise arm – OzHarvest Ventures! The new sister entity will focus on ‘growing business for good’ launching and scaling impact-driven business ideas that tackle environmental and social challenges. Ventures previously operated as ForPurposeCo running social impact projects including Juice For Good which was sold last year.
The first exciting venture is a new product with purpose ‘The Conscious Drink’ created in collaboration with Ben Tyler from Kakadu Kitchen and Tim Triggs from ALTD Spirits/No & Low. This zero-alcohol wine alternative uses rescued blueberries and wild-harvested botanicals, ethically sourced from First Nations-owned companies.
“The Conscious Drink has been created with love to encourage people to think more deeply about how their actions and purchases can create positive impact for people and planet.”
Ronni Kahn
OzHarvest Founder & CEO
OzHarvest Ventures will create a diversified funding model for sustainable long-term revenue generation for OzHarvest to help scale its impact.