For the past seven and a half years, Eat My Lunch has given one free school lunch to children for every corporate catering product purchased through its website. But, from December 16, the social enterprise will be no more.
Eat My Lunch founder Lisa King said that although the closure is a “sad and disappointing moment for the whole team”, it’s also an opportunity to look back and reflect on the business’ successes.
Since it was established in 2015, Eat My Lunch has fed more than 1.8 million school-aged children in need in Auckland and Wellington and prompted the Government to create its own school lunch programme – Ka Ora, Ka Ako.
However, when Covid-19 reached Aotearoa’s shores in early 2020, King said the “buy one, give one” business model used by Eat My Lunch was “killed almost overnight”.
Although the Government scheme feeds more than 220,000 children a day, there will still be 900 children who Eat My Lunch were providing lunches to that won’t be eligible for Government programmes, she said.
“Until there is food accessibility and equality, I never want to say that this is the end of Eat My Lunch, just the end of Eat My Lunch as we know it.”
