Our Next Step

As you all know, Pomegranate Kitchen helps refugees and newcomers get commercial cooking skills, New Zealand work experience, jobs, and help integrating into their new community. For the last several years, we provided that training and integration support within the commercial arm of our catering business. In a nutshell: we’ve been running a small training academy and resettlement services out of the kitchen of a catering company.

There’s a larger opportunity here.

We did some asset mapping and some overseas research, and it’s clear that there is an opportunity for Pomegranate Kitchen to operate differently. If we design a new, more sustainable model, separating our non-profit training from the a revenue generating arm, even more newcomers will get the training and dedicated support they need to access the New Zealand job market and integrate into their new community.

In order to move forward with these new ideas, our next step is to formalize our community, government and non-profit partnerships; secure core funding; and define the structure for a new model. To do that, we’ll be restricting commercial catering activities for two months, taking orders for 80 or more people only, after next Friday 8th March. This helps us pause and take stock of our next move. At the end of that period, Pomegranate Kitchen will continue our operations, under a new model.

Pomegranate Kitchen’s customers and funders have always championed us because of our unique work creating a social good that’s supported with a blend of nonprofit funding and commercial revenue. That’s going to continue in our new organization, using a different and more effective model. Keen to be involved? We will be reaching out over the next two months with the help, support and connections we might need.

We’re grateful for the support of our customers, our staff, and our community partners and champions — and we’re excited to create even more positive outcomes in our shared community (and our kitchens!) in in the days to come.

. Credit: Hagen Hopkins.