Birmingham chef turns food waste into jobs and dignity

Dr Birgit Kehrer started ChangeKitchen in 2010 with a simple idea: use a kitchen to solve two problems at once. Feed people who couldn't afford to eat well. Employ people the job market had written off.

Sixteen years later, she's just been named one of the UK's 100 most inspiring female entrepreneurs by Small Business Britain's #IAlso100 campaign. But the real measure of her work isn't the award. It's the numbers.

Since March 2020, ChangeKitchen has cooked and distributed 95,000 free meals from their base in Balsall Heath, Birmingham. They're still delivering 200 to 400 meals every week. They've packed nearly 10,000 emergency food parcels for people in crisis. And they've saved between 50 and 100 tonnes of surplus food from landfill every year — food that would have rotted in skips while people went hungry.

How a kitchen became a pathway

But ChangeKitchen isn't a charity handing out plates. It's a catering business that happens to be built on justice. Kehrer runs a professional operation — corporate clients, private events, a café called Kindness that specializes in plant-based menus. The difference is that every contract is also a doorway.

Every year, between 20 and 50 people get supported work placements through ChangeKitchen. Some are survivors of modern slavery, hired through partnership with the Jericho Foundation. Some have spent years outside the formal job market. The kitchen teaches them skills, gives them references, and — perhaps most importantly — treats them as workers, not cases.

The proof is in the payroll. ChangeKitchen started with 2.5 staff. Now they have 12. Many of them came through those placements.

Kehrer's recognition in the #IAlso100 lineup matters less for her ego than for what it signals about female entrepreneurship in the UK. Women now start businesses at higher rates than men, but they receive a fraction of the funding and far less media attention. The campaign exists partly to change that visibility — to show other women that this kind of work is possible, and worth doing.

"Being recognized through awards like this is so much more than just a badge," Kehrer said. "It helps give people, particularly women, a voice and an aspiration to achieve more."

The economic case is there too. Research suggests that if women started and scaled new businesses at the same rate as men, the UK economy could gain up to £250 billion. But the real case — the one that matters in Balsall Heath on a Tuesday morning when someone walks in needing a meal and a reason to believe they're employable — is simpler. A kitchen, run well and with intention, can change how a person sees themselves.