19 local organizations to watch: PichaEats

📋 What they do PichaEats is a catering business that enables refugees to provide home-cooked meals. It trains refugees to become professional chefs while the organization handles the remaining business elements — from designing the menus and packaging, running branding and marketing, and arranging logistics to deliver the food cooked by the chefs. The organization’s services include catered events, gift boxes, and food delivery. It also offers “Picha Experiences” such as open houses where customers are welcomed into a chef’s home to meet their family, learn their story, and enjoy a home-cooked meal together. 👀 Why we’re watching In contrast to typical catering companies, it trains refugees as chefs to provide income-generating opportunities to disenfranchised groups. It’s also committed to sustainability. It trains and certifies its chefs, such as walking them through a series of classes from food safety to kitchen hygiene and basic culinary skills. 🏢 Country of operation Malaysia. 🗓️ Founding year 2016. ➕ Leadership Co-founders: Kim Lim (also current CEO) and Suzanne Ling. 📊 Impact snapshot PichaEats now has a roster of 15 chefs from Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan. Over 135,000 meals have been prepared by refugees and it has served over 1,000 corporate clients for events, town halls, conferences, and more. PichaEats has also given back about $1.1 million to its chefs to ensure their kids can receive an education, families can pay rent, and they can enjoy daily life despite a lack of rights. 💡Insider scoop Like many social enterprises, it can be a delicate balance navigating the well-being and care of chefs while ensuring the sustainability of the social enterprise. It also has to partake in education campaigns to help break stereotypes of refugee communities. And being in the food and beverage industry presents another challenge — profit margins can be tight, so it frequently reviews and revises ingredient costs, while exploring sustainable ways to manage food waste, to ensure financial viability. In the future, the team is exploring capacity-building programs, which would see refugee high schoolers intern with PichaEats. ➡️ Follow 🌐 pichaeats.com