New Indigenous-owned catering enterprise to serve healthy bush tucker

A new Indigenous owned and run catering enterprise is being established to train and employ Aboriginal people in food service.

A NEW Indigenous catering enterprise is being established after plans by a community health service to train and employ Aboriginal people in food service received a funding boost.

Based at Alice Springs, health service Purple House will use the $114,450 grant from Coles Nurture Fund to fit out a new commercial kitchen where training and employment opportunities will be offered to dialysis patients, their families and Indigenous people from remote communities.

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The commercial kitchen is a new project for the Indigenous owned and run health service which primarily focuses on providing dialysis to Indigenous people and also runs a social enterprise selling a range of balms and creams based on Central Australian bush medicines.

Once completed, the new kitchen will offer healthy food for catering and events with a Central Australian bush tucker twist.

Purple House CEO Sarah Brown, Coles Regional Manager Daniel Clegg and Purple House team member Chloe Dodd

Purple House CEO Sarah Brown welcomed the grant and said the new commercial kitchen was expected to help build improved health and wellbeing for families, a better understanding of nutrition, increased Indigenous employment and new business opportunities for catering and events.

“We’re looking forward to creating delicious, healthy food with a unique Central Australian

flavour,” Ms Brown said.

“This is the icing on the cake (accompanied by coffee from the machine this

grant will also deliver) for our beautiful new social enterprise hub which has endless potential as a place of cultural exchange and positive engagement between patients, family and the broader community,” she said.

Coles NT Regional Manager Daniel Clegg said the new project aligned with Coles’ strategy to provide more opportunities for Indigenous people, organisations and communities.

Since it was established in 2015, the Coles Nurture Fund has provided financial support to more than 65 Australian businesses to help them introduce innovative technology, improve sustainability, establish new products and drive productivity.

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The $114,450 grant for the kitchen fit-out comes after Coles raised around $40,000 for Purple House in November last year at its eight supermarkets across the Northern Territory.

Coles currently employs more than 100 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander team members across the NT, and 4,900 across Australia.

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Originally published as New Indigenous-owned catering enterprise to serve healthy bush tucker