Keyword Search

Beef Kitchen nominated for Social Enterprise of the Year in the Edge Upstarts Awards 2008

The Sir Oswald Stoll Foundation's Beef Kitchen initiative has been nominated for Social Enterprise of the Year in the Edge Upstarts Awards 2008 (www.edgeupstarts.org/awards).

The awards recognise excellence in all aspects of social enterprise, including their vital contribution to training and practical learning. Set up in 2001, the awards aim to encourage and reward extraordinary vision, ethical business practice and social responsibility. They showcase businesses that offer innovative and sustainable solutions to social problems.

The Beef Kitchen was established in July of 2005 as a mobile catering business managed and staffed by former homeless ex-Servicemen who are residents of the Sir Oswald Stoll Foundation and financed with the help of the Foundation and several of its supporters. Their goal was to establish a business that could help to support the Foundation's aims, which include assisting homeless and disabled ex-Service personnel to live independently, by providing employment experience.

The Beef Kitchen provides Sunday lunch to other disabled residents to enhance a sense of community, and provides food for special events that the Foundation holds. It also operates a superior mobile catering business for football fans from a licensed pitch on the grounds of the Sir Oswald Stoll Foundation, adjacent to Stamford Bridge, the home of Chelsea FC. Three years after it began, the Beef Kitchen has now fed some 20,000 football fans, provided training and work experience to 25 former homeless ex-Servicemen and is now due to take this successful business model and set-up a commercially viable café by Putney Bridge. Advice and training for this venture is supported by the Royal British legion and Training for Life, who will run an apprenticeship scheme from the café when it opens in May 2008.

For more information about the Beef Kitchen, Sir Oswald Stoll Foundation or the Edge Upstarts Awards nomination, please contact Katie Truss, Fundraising Manager on 020 7381 7488 / katie.truss@oswaldstoll.org.uk.