In a heartfelt and engaging conversation, Kemi Akinola, CEO of Be Enriched, opens up about the charity's transformative work amid the food crisis exacerbated by the pandemic.

Created in 2013, Be Enriched initially focused on supporting at-risk youth, but the organization swiftly adapted to address the urgent needs of those facing food insecurity and social isolation during COVID-19. Kemi shares her profound sense of responsibility to help those in need, particularly when many people struggled to access food amidst empty supermarket shelves. The charity's rapid response included the distribution of thousands of emergency food parcels, illustrating a remarkable commitment to community support.

The episode delves into the emotional landscape of the pandemic as Kemi recounts the challenges of restricting community meals, which were crucial for fostering connections among vulnerable individuals.

Her ability to pivot the organization and leverage volunteer support showcases the power of community spirit, with humorous anecdotes about unconventional delivery methods, including a horse and cart that brought joy to children during lockdown.

This lighthearted yet poignant narrative highlights Kemi's belief in the importance of maintaining a human connection, even in the most challenging circumstances.

The discussions also touch upon the necessity of food quality and the commitment to providing nutritious options, reinforcing the idea that everyone deserves access to healthy food, regardless of their financial situation.

As the podcast progresses, Kemi encourages listeners, particularly those in the hospitality industry, to remain optimistic and proactive. She emphasizes the value of utilizing one’s skills to contribute to community projects, positioning volunteering as a vital pathway for personal and professional growth during tough times.

Plans for a mobile greengrocer bus further illustrate Be Enriched's innovative approach to expanding access to food. The episode culminates in a powerful message about resilience, adaptability, and the collective responsibility to support one another, leaving listeners inspired to take action in their own communities.

Kemi Akinola's story serves as a testament to the profound impact of compassion and community engagement, reminding us all of the strength found in working together to overcome adversity.

Takeaways:

• Kemi Akinola highlights the importance of community connections, especially during the pandemic's isolation.
• Be Enriched has adapted to the challenges of COVID-19 by providing emergency food deliveries.
• The innovative use of a horse and cart for delivering food created joy during difficult times.
• Kemi emphasizes the moral obligation to support those struggling with food access during crises.
• The collaboration with local councils and volunteers was vital for effective food distribution efforts.
• Finding opportunities in adversity is key for hospitality workers during these challenging times.

Links referenced in this episode:

• www.beenriched.org

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Be Enriched
• Brixton People's Kitchen
• City Harvest
• Felix Project
• Marriott

Okay. Welcome to this, our third podcast Talking Hospitality I'm Timothy R. Andrews, and this is Sarah Kette;

Hello.

I'm a consultant and involved in a number of hospitality projects,

and I'm a Chef working in restaurant management.

In last week's episode, we talked about the future of hospitality.

We had listeners from all over the world, including the UK, Poland, Holland, and the US.

Thank you to everybody that listened and that shared our podcast.

This is episode three where we're going to be talking about food charities and how they have addressed the food crisis that came along with the pandemic. This week, we are delighted to have Kemi Akinola, CEO of Be Enriched with us. Welcome, Kemi.

Hello.

Hello.

How are you doing?

I'm good. Thank you very much.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

So who are Be Enriched?

We cook a lovely meal with the volunteers. Volunteers cook a meal, and very healthy one.

And then everybody sits down and eats it together and kind of making a lot of community, helping people to make connections and networks where otherwise they couldn't.

So obviously the worst part about the lockdown for me was having to tell all these people that struggle to make connections due to ill health or age or finances that they could no longer come together to eat. And that was very difficult for them as well.

A lot of them still continued to come to one of the churches that we were operating from on a weekly basis. Luckily, I had some amazing chefs who would also just give them food when they came to the door. So that was great.

Kemi, you've not really had a break through lockdown at all, have you? There's been no furlough for you, no time off, no sitting watching Netflix. Tell us about what you've been doing.

That's absolutely right, Sarah. And to be honest, I did that to myself because me and the team could have taken time off.

But as soon as we heard what was going on and we heard about, we had stories from people who were struggling. We knew that there was something that we could do. So we took it upon ourselves.

We took three days to think about it and then took it upon ourselves to reopen both the community projects that I run and a cafe that I run with Brixton People's Kitchen and use them as emergency food distribution. Centers. So I think overall we sent something like 5,000 emergency food parcels out across the boroughs of Wandsworth and Lambeth in three months.

It's amazing.

It's incredible.

Those numbers are pretty amazing.

What inspired you to make the changes to Be Enriched during lockdown?

I felt a moral obligation to support people because I could. I wasn't ill. I have access to a lot of food, building spaces, the will and support of volunteers and other team members. Food has always been.

And lack of food has always been a great passion of mine. I campaign for everybody to have access to food at all times.

So I couldn't imagine not doing anything in a time when you would walk to the supermarket and there would be nothing on the shelves. So I think that's why I felt I had to do something.

Delivering 5,000 packages of food is quite a task. How did you manage that?

Lots and lots of coffee. We had. We had. We worked in one borough, we worked with the local council to source food, which was even in.

From warehouses and in bulk that was really difficult to get hold of.

So in one borough we worked with them to source the food and then in the other borough we just bought loads of food and using lots of surplus food there as well, and planning and organization. A million emails. Do you know? I don't. I'm not. I'm not really sure how we did it, but we just did.

Lots of volunteers with cars, lots of people doing walking deliveries, people on bicycles, on cargo bikes, quite a few Ubers as well, and a horse and cartoon.

Tell us about the horse and cart.

All the LOLs, Sarah. All the LOLs.

If there's anything about a pandemic that really, like, makes you see the funniest side or makes you a bit more playful with the very seriousness of the pandemic definitely was deliveries. We were up most days at work about 8 o'clock. Army of about 25 volunteers every day. So these are people who.

Some of them were furloughed, some of them just wanted to give back in some way.

Up at 8 and we'd do the last delivery at about 6pm I would say probably like three of the people there were being paid, everybody else was a volunteer. So that's like showing really incredible community spirit.

So in our three months we also did a TikTok, which you can see on our Facebook page, which is amazing, but it was something nice to. To take the. To, like break up the day. But one day a local man with his horse and cart offered to do some deliveries to some of the children.

So if you can imagine, a lot of these very young children had been locked up at home with their parents and maybe siblings and not allowed to go out. So delivering one of these emergency boxes to them on a horse and cart was just quite incredible.

It's like something out of a movie.

The kids came out screaming, the parents, a lot of them. It's very strange, I think, to fight to see a horse full stop, but a horse and cart in the middle of a housing estate.

So it really brought a lot of the parents out. You know, they got to stroke the horse, see a bit of nature. And we gave them their boxes and, you know, broke up a bit of the.

What was a really scary time.

How did that make you feel when you saw the way people reacted?

Something about traveling by horse and cart that just fills you with like this incredible sense of like, I don't know, it's not really adrenaline, but it's like a different mode of arrival when you kind of feel very regal arriving by horse. So I was already full of joy, to quote Marie Kondo. I was full of joy.

And then when the kids came out and they were really happy, like so happy, that's just the best feeling ever. I mean, I think we could have given them like, I was going to say a toilet roll, but you know, that was pretty scarce as well.

But we could have given them anything and they would have just been really happy to see the horse. That was really nice.

Kemi, how do you source the food?

Yes, our food comes to us from a variety of sources. We work with City Harvest soon, also the Felix Project that specialize in collecting and delivering surplus food from a variety of different sources.

We work with a couple of local wholesalers, specifically those that do cultural foods like mangoes, pineapples, yams, sweet potato, good sweet potato. We're about to set up a partnership with a local. Well, not local. The guy is from Jamaica. The farms he works with are in Jamaica, so it's that local.

And a couple of farmers in Nigeria as well. And then we've got also some.

Then we also just work with your general bog standard wholesalers because people like cornflakes, but only if it's Kellogg's and people will eat beans, but only if it's Heinz.

Even in a lockdown, we've had to really think like, just because people have not got enough money doesn't mean they shouldn't have the best quality of food.

Did you have many hospitality people volunteer for you?

We had a guy called Shiva who used to be a Thai chef, but Then moved into property consulting. We had a lady called Audrey who was front of house at one of the Marriott hotels.

And then we had this amazing superstar executive chef from the Marriott called Jamie Welsh who came and helped us out two days a week for most of the time. And he was just brilliant and we love him very much. Yeah.

So Kemi, moving forward, I know that you have procured a bus. Can you tell us about the bus?

Yes, I have. Two and a half years ago.

And also, why did you ditch the horse and cartoon.

Sarah? I love the horse and cart but you know, it's quite slow and you can't really carry that many delivery boxes in it. When it rains you'll get wet.

Horses poo. They poo on the street. You've got to clear that up.

That's not to be sniffed at.

Although it was fun. I would definitely travel by a horse. Again, not going to get me anywhere very fast.

But in answer to your earlier question, about two and a half years ago, the Wandsworth Food Partnership, which my.

Which be enriched convenes and a couple of the food banks and other food aid organizers with Feeding Britain, which is like this big organization that's trying to improve access to food across the whole of Britain, as the name suggests, concocted an idea that we would buy a double decker bus and convert it into a mobile greengrocer. But it has taken forever to get to the point where next week at some point we're going to pick up the keys.

We also, it was like, you know, we agreed the idea then we had to secure the funding. Loads of people left in this two year period. My project manager had a baby so she's on maternity leave.

Anyway, Covid happened as well, that very important thing.

And yeah, it's really just literally we were just about to get the show on the road and what it is is a greengrocer on the bottom floor so people can choose, you know, like a shop, what they would like. We're gonna have a little cooking area so our chef Carl can do some cooking demonstrations and we might be able to do some food out of a hatch.

And on the top level we've got a cafe and seating area. So eventually when we can all sit down next to each other, we can have like nice meals up there.

But for the minute we'll probably just use that for giving advice. And people need to use the Internet. They'll be able to sit up there and do a CV or something like that. So very limited capacity.

Anyway, it will be traveling from Enfield through to Wandsworth sometime next week. And Silver says the food bus on it, in case there's any doubt what it is.

That's incredible. And where do you plan to drive the food bus to?

Battersea, Tooting and Roehampton will almost take up all of the week as it is. Wow. So we're probably just going to keep it in Wandsworth for this year at least. It will be on our website, www.beenriched.org.

Amazing. We'll look out for that.

So, Kemi, what kind of advice might you give somebody who's either been working in hospitality or is afraid of where their career might go?

I think that there are lots of opportunities for people to use their skills. Although I know a lot of restaurants were closing down, they are very slowly reopening. There are some places that have shut down.

But then I see a lot of opportunists who are using this as a. As a springboard to open up new food businesses. So I would say keep your eye out looking for that sort of job.

I mean, from my organization, for example, we are probably one of the few food charities and my social enterprise books and People's Kitchen that actually managed to stay open and fairly afloat the whole time. And we're actually looking for new people and also volunteer. Don't. Don't stop using your skills.

I know a lot of chefs, they love cooking and they just have to cook. So go find a community project and help them cook food.

I think that at the end of COVID those people who just have kept things on their CV are the people that will be the most employable in the future.

That's great advice.

Yeah.

I think it's very easy to sit on your laurels and think, oh, it's.

The end of the world.

I'll just sit here and wait for something to happen. But the truth is, there are the opportunities out there.

That's really good advice. Thank you. What an amazing job that you've done done.

I mean, it's incredible and it's hugely inspirational and we're really grateful that you're spending time talking to us today. It's really incredible.

Yeah. What you've done is amazing.

Thank you, Kemi.

Oh, pleasure. Thank you for listening.

Let us know your thoughts and comments on today's topic.

We look forward to you joining us in the next episode of Talking Hospitality. Available on itunes, Soundcloud, Google Play and YouTube.