• What does it do? Caring Cooks of Jersey aims to combat childhood obesity, diabetes and tooth decay on the island of Jersey. It offers healthy school meals and free meals to low-income families, as well as running nutrition education programmes.
• Income pre and post programme: £12,965 to £272,808
• Ratio of trading income to other income pre and post programme: 100% traded income.
• SSE programme: Lloyds Bank Social Entrepreneurs Scale Up Programme 2019, jointly funded by The National Lottery Community Fund.

In Jersey one in three children leave primary school obese, due to a combination of poverty and poor diet.  Data suggests 40% will stay that way into adulthood.

Caring Cooks believes that all children deserve the right to nutritious food every day, regardless of affluence.  They provide free meals, school lunches and educational programmes to improve nutrition and home-cooking skills, especially for those on low incomes, or in crisis due to poor health.

Founder Melissa Nobrega joined the Lloyds Bank Social Entrepreneurs Scale Up Programme, jointly funded by The National Lottery Community Fund in 2019 and received a Match Trading grant of £10,000.

Melissa started the programme just as Covid-19 hit. She’d just launched a primary school meal programme, but her income from trading was minimal.

Because schools closed due to Covid, they diverted their school meals service to ‘Caring Cooks in the Community’ an initiative to provide meals and vital support to Islanders affected by the pandemic and the lockdowns, regardless of socio economic status.

“We had to quickly change how we worked, creating safe working protocols in the kitchen, new shift patterns, PPE. It was a lot of hard work.”

Within five days she was able to create a service which ultimately delivered over 10,000  meals to 293 households during lockdown.

Having the Match Trading grant enabled Caring Cooks to support more people and pivot their service. Unlike a traditional grant, the Match Trading grant was not ring-fenced. Having an unrestricted grant enabled her to invest in this new much needed service.

The programme gave Melissa the confidence and skills to scale the business.

During the programme, Melissa won a government tender to deliver a lunchtime food service to five secondary schools and a Prep school. “Had I not been on the programme, I wouldn’t have tendered for the government contract.”  Working with the Jersey government, Caring Cooks ambitious project seeks to offer hot meals to every school child in Jersey, to improve their health and educational attainment. Hot school lunches had never been offered before by the Island’s schools.

Because of this increase in income, the organization has increased its reach and impact and hopes that in the coming years, the charity’s programmes will reach every child and young person in Jersey.

The financials show the success Melissa’s had with scaling the organisation. In 2019, turnover was over £175,000. In 2021 turnover is predicted at £1.3million.

“It’s down to SSE and the Match Trading grant that I’ve learnt about financials and how to scale up the business.  We are currently 11 staff and we’ll be 36 by the end of 2020.  We’ve scaled our organisation three-fold since I started the programme.”

Melissa was able to leave the business in April 2021 in a very good position, financially sustainable, with 41 staff and a turnover of over £700,000.

She’s since taken on a board director role with the charity Nutrition Australia and is using her social entrepreneurship skills and experience over the past seven years, as a freelancer to support charities across Australia to grow, measure and demonstrate their impact.  She credits the programme and the grant for giving her the confidence and leadership skills to move on from the business.

The increased costs of fuel and food continues to impact the business and it’s a challenge to continue traded operations for school meals at a cost that’s viable for parents to pay. The new CEO Yvonne Corbin is working hard to advocate for young people with the Jersey government to ensure the vital service continues.

Melissa concludes: “You need to look outside traditional funding models if you want to scale.  You can’t rely on funding that might not be available in the future.  Develop a strategy that’s not grant-dependent.”