Today is an exciting day! Today marks one year since our food-for-wellness initiative – #friskmat, became a non-profit!

A lot has happened throughout that last year, some of it we have reported on before, but among the highlights of the year is a welcomed surprise we got as of recently. The non-profit received its first large donation! Previously we have sustained the initiative on membership fees, crowdfunding, follower donations as well as small company donations. All of these contributions have been immensely supportive for us in getting the non-profit not only up but running too – they are what made it possible for us to arrive at this point today where we can share with you that we have received a 1 million kronor donation from af Jochnick Foundation! That money will be used to create the digital platform for information exchange between commercial kitchens. An exciting opportunity to say the least!

This platform of information exchange will help to build a community among commercial kitchen staff members. The intention is that, through this community, knowledge will be accessible, particularly within the public food sectors. And, that this information exchange will become a tool to raise quality and standards across a broad spectrum of commercial kitchens. The content will be moderated by dietitians and other professionals within the field. 

Resources for those who work in a majority of commercial kitchens e.g., school cafeterias and hospital kitchens, are in short. Those who prepare and serve the food in these commercial kitchens often lack nutrition education and knowledge of how food influences our health. 

By creating this free platform we hope to develop a grassroots initiative that can not only provide this education but support commercial kitchen staff in their rolls and make their jobs easier.

Think of it like a “Food 52 – for commercial kitchens”, plus a whole lot more! Our ambitions for the platform are: a recipe database that also takes into consideration, budgeting, nutrition and sustainability. As well as developing digital meeting spaces, editorials about successful stories, ready to go “copy-paste” purchasing list, procurement tips and tricks and last but not least, courses (developed by dietitians) pertaining to nutrition and the correlations between food and wellness.

Hipp hipp hurray!

This is a guest post. The opinions expressed are the writer’s own.