open
kitchen
SUSTAINABLE - ETHICAL - DELICIOUS
WHY CHOOSE OPEN KITCHEN CATERING?
There are so many reasons to choose Open Kitchen for your sustainable, ethical and delicious event catering...
Stamping out food waste
Open Kitchen works with a huge range of food businesses to intercept perfectly edible food that will otherwise go to waste. For every tonne of food that we stop from going to waste, we stop 4.2 tonnes of CO2e from being emitted, so we are actively helping to lower Greater Manchester’s carbon footprint.
sustainable ingredients
Open Kitchen also buys ingredients, choosing only local, independent, seasonal, sustainably produced and ethically traded goods. As a value-led organisation we use our buying power to help to create the sustainable food future we want to see.
social enterprise
Open Kitchen is a local, independent not-for-profit organisation, and a fairer and more community focused form of business.
Profits supporting local people in crisis
All of our profits (and some grant funded projects) go towards our community focused work. Open Kitchen supports a range of Greater Manchester residents struggling with food insecurity. We provide meals, grocery parcels and other basic supplies.
Expert chef team:
A true foodie experience
Our kitchen operations are run by experienced and qualified Chefs. Our Chefs never know what ingredients will be intercepted. Our menus change every single day to stop good food from being wasted, and also to work with what’s local and seasonal. Our Chefs joke that they play the biggest, tastiest and most sustainable game of Ready, Steady, Cook the world has ever seen.
The result? A bespoke, seasonal, sustainable, and freshly prepared menu every single time you order. No processed, mass produced products and no “same old, same old”.
All dietary requirements catered for
Open Kitchen can cater for vegan and vegetarian menus, menus with no gluten containing ingredients, and menus avoiding most major allergens. Our menus can range from healthy to indulgent, and we love to work with local, seasonal produce, ensuring great flavours and higher levels of nutrition.
Great Value: a fair price for great food
Open Kitchen works hard to ensure our catering prices are affordable. Our organisation follows a philosophy of “enough profit”. Our aims in financial terms are to ensure the business is financially secure, to make enough profit to subsidise our community support activities, and to reinvest in developing the company. We don’t have any shareholders or pay dividends to any investors. Our prices might be slightly higher than some other catering companies. This is because we pay good wages to our staff, support local farmers and pay the amount they need to produce food sustainably, and source compostable and recycled packaging that is less harmful to the environment.
Sustainable Packaging
For our outside catering service, Open Kitchen offer a range of compostable and 100% recycled packaging options that are the most sustainable disposable products available. We also offer a 100% reusable catering service which delivers lightweight reusable crockery, cutlery, cups, glassware, etc, which are collected at the end of your event. Going reusable is the most sustainable option where it is possible for our customers, and where a reusable service isn’t practical, we ensure that our disposable packaging options are as kind to the environment as they can be.
Real Living Wage Employer
A proud Real Living Wage Employer, Open Kitchen is creating stable and decent jobs in hospitality. Beyond our commitment to fair pay, we also structure our contracts to completely remove unpaid overtime, which is still a rarity in the hospitality sector.
a local independent business
Supporting local and independent not only helps to support a fair economy, keeping wealth within the region and in the hands of working people (not shareholders), but shorter supply chains also have a lower carbon footprint. Local and independent is good for people and planet.
Campaigning for a sustainable food future
We campaign and share information on a huge range of food and drink topics from national and International trade laws, to seasonal produce, and recipes to use up leftovers. We hope to inspire and engage people to reduce food waste and change their eating and drinking habits to move towards a more sustainable food future.