New van allows Tony’s Kitchen to save more food and lives

Meet the two newest members of the Tony’s Community Kitchen team and find out what this incredible charities big plans for the next 12 months involves.

Unpacking the new van are (from left) Greg Kowald, Tony Hurle and Andrew Bullen at Tony's Community Kitchen, Monday, August 16, 2021. Picture: Kevin Farmer

Tony’s Community Kitchen have recently welcomed two important new members to the team with Andrew Bullen from Precinct Urban Planning announced as the charity’s fifth board director and a shiny new delivery van from Peter Roberts Honda.

Mr Bullen said he and his wife Fleur have been passionate supporters of Tony’s Kitchen since Tony Hurle started out providing a barbecue for the homeless in Clewley Park four nights a week.

Unpacking the new van are (from left) new Tony’s Community Kitchen board member Andrew Bullen, Greg Kowald and Tony Hurle at Tony's Community Kitchen. Picture: Kevin Farmer

“Since moving to Toowoomba in 2004, the city has been very good to us and we’ve always wanted to give back to a number of different charities, but there was something special about Tony’s that keep us coming back,” he said.

“We decided to purchase a van for them last year to help with all the food pick ups, before this Tony was forced to load up his tiny little Corolla to the food with as much food as he could fit. With a van he was able to collect more food, and therefore help more people.”

Ms Bullen said it was an honour to be invited to join the board of directors and great confidence in what the team were going to achieve over the next 12-months.

“I’m excited to bring my finance and business knowledge to the table and make sure Tony’s is as financially viable as possible so that this organisation is a long-term solution for our region,” he said.

Mr Hurle said he was beyond excited to see the Tony’s Community Kitchen fleet grow to three vehicles in under 12 months.

“The new van is much bigger and will make our weekly trips to Food Bank in Morningside much easier as they can load entire pallets into the back now, whereas we used to have to manually unload and load the pallets into our smaller van,” he said.

Unpacking the new van are (from left) Greg Kowald, Tony Hurle and Andrew Bullen at Tony's Community Kitchen. Picture: Kevin Farmer

“The smaller van will still be used to pick up boxes of food from Aldi in Highfields and North Point every day, we’re just able to do everything much more efficiently now which means more food for our clients and less food in landfill.”

With just under 2000 visits each month, Mr Hurle estimates Tony’s Kitchen saves thousands of perfectly safe and edible food from entering landfill each year.

“This is food that can no longer be sold as it’s past its best before date but it’s all still perfectly fresh, nutritious and safe for human consumption,” he said.

“We’ve got big plans for the future and we want to be able to help people across the Toowoomba region, not just here in Toowoomba City.”

The new van was purchased with a $35,000 Community Gambling Fund plus $7,000 of Tony’s Kitchen’s own funds.

Unpacking the new van is Tony's Community Kitchen founder Tony Hurle. Picture: Kevin Farmer

“We’re now focusing on our next big project called Operation Accommodation and involves us securing $100,000 of funding to purchase four caravans as emergency accommodation for victims of DV and vulnerable homeless community members,” he said.

“We’re then hoping to work with other services to then seek out longer-term solutions for these members of our community to we can break the cycle of homelessness and get them back on track once and for all.”