DINNER ON THE TABLE | SOCIAL ENTERPRISE AT WORK

Every time Rachel Golding and her team spring into action in their commercial kitchen in Castle Hill they are creating a tasty dish for a client plus gifting a meal to a family living with a disability.

In her former life as an academic Rachel’s research was centred around the disability sector and parents and children with disabilities. It was when she was working from home and caring for her own young family that her love of cooking turned into the social enterprise, Dinner on the Table.

A friend asked her if she would supply her cooked meals, she then started cooking for other friends and then people she didn’t know said they would like to buy her pre-cooked meals too.

“After a few months, I realised it was going to be a thing and I had to find a commercial kitchen,” she said. “I then started thinking about what else can this business do? All my research had essentially been around family wellbeing and families with a parent or child with disability…and I thought, if you could cook dinner for everyone in the whole house, that would have an impact.”

As a result profits from the sales of dinners are used to provide no cost meals to families living with a disability.

She said it eases the family budget, gives back quality time the carers and helps the whole family’s wellbeing by providing good quality, healthy meals. In the past five years Dinner on the Table has provided 1700 meals (feeding over 6000 people) to families with a disabled parent or child.

Dinner on the Table is now working with disability organisations to identify families needing meals. Their partners include Northcott Disability Services and The Hills School at Northmead. The relationship with The Hills School is on several levels.

“The Hills School collect our scraps to compost and they bring us herbs and veggies. Our pumpkin seeds grow into pumpkins in the compost which then come back to us,” laughs Rachel.

Dinner on the Table will be part of a Compass program on the ABC on October 13 which is looking at businesses mentored under the ADM (Anglican Deaconess Ministries program).

To find out more about the social enterprise model of Dinner on the Table and more about Rachel’s team visit dinneronthetable.com.au