RIVERSIDE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In one day, as summer temperatures in California hit a record peak of 125-degrees, ZIPHOMECHEF rose from one employee to 17 new hires. Without fanfare, the high- tech social enterprise moved into Riverside County and began to prepare and deliver fresh, healthy meals made with local produce to more than 350 individuals. Their clients? People who had found shelter from the intense summer heat through a countywide multi-agency program called Project Roomkey. Over the past two months, the company has prepared and delivered over 50,000 meals. Their goal: 100,000 meals delivered by the end of the year.
To get there, ZIPHOMECHEF.com plans to grow from one to 100 kitchens in Riverside over the next few months by training people who have a home kitchen and love to cook how to create a licensed microenterprise home kitchen operation (MHKO). Working from home, home cooks can learn how to prepare healthy meals that the organization can purchase for delivery to vulnerable individuals in their community, including the elderly and people with health issues. Through the online platform home chefs can sell up to 60 meals per week to neighbors.
“We’re connecting people who love to cook with a future home-based career. Their job includes learning safety protocols required to run a small business from their own home kitchen,” says Alexia Parks, the company’s award-winning CEO. “We have developed a structural framework to enable sustainable success for licensed home cooks.”
Due to COVID-19, the company is now considered an “essential industry.” It offers both an emergency food, and food security solution for cities and counties and a job creation opportunity for those seeking a consistent income from home.
Those who take part in the company’s “food prep” training can become part of the company’s “first in the nation” online network of First Food Responders™ providing a local response to emergency food needs, while also running a small business from their home kitchen.
In Riverside County, which includes an oasis called Palm Springs, a landscape of avocado trees and vineyards in Temecula, and a rock climbers paradise called Joshua Tree National Park, ZIPHOMECHEF.com is creating an “oasis of hope” for those who love to cook, to the benefit of all.
