THE PERFECT BLEND

Hi Chris. As the founder of Blend Kitchen, can you start by telling us a bit about your role?

My role is really varied. It ranges from fundraising and getting sponsorship for the business, to helping develop the menus, training the staff and our volunteers, and generally making sure that everything runs properly day-to-day.

What things do you particularly enjoy about the role?

I really liked the variety in it –there’s never two days the same. I can come to work one day and I could literally be in the kitchen washing pots, and then other days I might be meeting a royal [last year Blend hosted a Royal visit from The Countess of Wessex]! We also won a Sheffield Business Award. Next week, we've got the Chamber of Commerce coming in for a meeting with other the business leaders. It's so varied.

Sounds like a lot of fun. What lead you to set up Blend Kitchen?

I trained as a chef from school and began working in small hotels. I went on to work for charities and voluntary organisations providing life skills training for people that were in drug rehabs or supported housing projects. Off the back of that, I decided to use my catering skills to set up Blend kitchen as a way to use food, and selling food, to create opportunities for people and deliver positive social change.

I set Blend up in 2016 and, initially, we ran hospitality training courses and did pop-up street food events out of community centres and local pubs. It's grown and developed to where we now have our own place on Ecclesall Road.

Now that you have the space on Ecclesall Road, what sort of challenges are you facing?

The biggest challenge that we're currently facing is that we opened the restaurant straight out of COVID lockdowns, and when we originally signed the lease on the building, before the pandemic, there was meant to be 600 office staff above us. There's currently around 50, so that really impacted on our takings initially, and we've had to change our business model. We've moved to getting grant income in and increasing other sides of the business, like ticketed events and outside catering, so that we can keep delivering our social aims. There’s a lot of positives still, and the team here are amazing. There are so many talented people with incredible stories. For example, last year we helped a guy who was in drug rehab, who’s now making pizzas at Picture House Social. There are so many people who care so much about the business. That feels like the thing that we've really been able to build over this last couple of years.

Blend Kitchen is a social enterprise restaurant that provides training, support and jobs for people who are looking to work in hospitality but might face barriers to employment.

@blendkitchensheffield // blendkitchen.co.uk