In the ninth of our Overdose & Chill live Instagram interviews, our CEO, Todd Welling, chats with Kellie Burbidge, General Manager at Eat My Lunch, about her journey, the challenges of scaling a business, managing change, and what’s on the horizon for the enterprise.
Eat My Lunch
Eat My Lunch’s mission statement is “to ensure that no child at school goes hungry, starting with kids right here in our own backyard,” and the idea was conceived in response to 28% of Kiwi kids living in poverty and thousands going to school every day without food. For every lunch bought, this Social Enterprise gives a lunch to a Kiwi kid in need. With a good lunch in their tummies, the kids do better in so many ways, from being better focused on learning to simply just putting a smile on their faces.
As a direct result of not kids going hungry, 62% of schools saw improved attendance, 69% saw improved behavior, and 89% saw an improvement in student health & wellbeing. June this year marked Eat My Lunch’s 5th birthday, and they are proud to have given away over 1.5million lunches to Kiwi kids in need to date.
The Eat My Lunch team believes that clever business solutions can help solve social issues, so they created an innovative business model that intrinsically links a social objective into the heart of a for-profit business. The model is sustainable, scalable, and enables Kiwis to help other Kiwis. With the help of award-winning chef Michael Meredith, Eat My Lunch offers individuals and workplaces fresh, healthy lunches delivered across Auckland, Wellington, and Hamilton combined with the knowledge that they are helping to make a difference locally.
Kellie Burbidge
Before joining the Eat My Lunch team, Kellie had gained a myriad of valuable management experiences across the corporate world and in corporate banking. After taking some time to improve her work/life balance, Kellie found her current role at Eat My Lunch, which speaks to her social conscience, allows her to share her experience in supporting small enterprises, and integrates her passion for kids and making a difference.