Living the tasty life on FoodSt

17th February 2021 | Alison Turner

Have you ever caught a tantalising whiff of a neighbour’s delicious cooking and thought, “Geez, I wish they’d make some for me”? One enterprising Sydney couple has made that wistful wish a reality, creating FoodSt. This successful online platform sells nutritious, homemade meals created by passionate and talented home cooks who love to share their food with time-poor, real food-loving Australian families.

Co-founded by ex-chef turned corporate accounts manager Lorraine Gnanadickam and her husband Sanjay, FoodSt is a marketplace that enables cooks to their sell healthy, home-cooked meals to other homes across the country. Food St supplies delivery and marketing support to the cooks, all of whom undergo stringent vetting and food safety training.

The platform provides flexible paid employment to cooks who choose not to take the route of traditional workplaces. Some are on maternity leave, others are retired chefs; people whose employment has been affected by COVID-19. Some are immigrants with limited English who want to use their cooking skills to share their culture’s cuisine.

Foodst founders Sanjay and Lorraine Gnanadickam
Food St founders Sanjay and Lorraine Gnanadickam have hit upon a winning food formula.

Love thy neighbour’s food

Gnanadickam was inspired to create FoodSt after becoming frustrated by the fact that her busy corporate career was making it too difficult for her to regularly prepare nutritious, tasty home-cooked meals for her own family.

“Being a full-time working mum with two young children, I felt like I was failing,” she says. “Because I wasn’t able to cook and produce beautiful meals for my family. We were ordering a lot of takeaway and eating substandard supermarket meals.

“Then one day, I was having a conversation with my husband about these people who lived on our street. I said, ‘The woman who cooks Mexican across the road, wouldn’t it be great if we could buy her food?’”

Gnanadickam realised that there were countless other people just like her, struggling to find time to cook for their families. She and her husband came up with the idea of connecting people in the local community so they could gain regular access to quality, home-cooked food. They began looking into how they could bring the concept to life, working with the NSW Food Authority to address food safety issues from the outset. In 2017, they launched FoodSt as a hot food service. By 2019, they expanded to a frozen line of products.

FoodSt hidden veg bolognese
Hidden veg kids’ spaghetti bolognese by Food St cook Katijah.

Authentic flavours the recipe for success

To date, FoodSt has sold more than 15,000 meals and has grown by 70 percent since this time last year. The business also recently received a $500,000 injection from payment giant Afterpay’s co-founder David Hancock to expand its network further.

“For me, food has always been about sharing and enjoying it together,” Gnanadickam says. “I think what’s happening – and what worries me – is we’re so focused on convenience. Because we’re time-poor, we’re losing some of that essence of what food really is.”

FoodSt chicken and veg enchiladas
Chicken and veg Mexican enchiladas made by home cook Michelle.

FoodSt hasn’t just brought back the reality of healthy, home-cooked meals for many lucky families; it’s also had a hugely positive impact on the lives of its cooks. These are people who love to cook and who are looking for flexible work options.

“We have people from all walks of life selling meals on the platform,” Gnanadickam says. “Our cooks are from all over the world, bringing the flavours of their home countries to the plate. This means we have a unique marriage of diversity and authenticity in our menu. Watching our cooks succeed is one of the most satisfying components of this business.”

FoodSt handmade curry puffs
Handmade curry puffs from Iris, who began cooking at the tender age of nine.

Meet the cooks

Iris, who is from a Cambodian Chinese background, has been in Australia for almost two years now. Before she began cooking for FoodSt, she had never cooked for an income before. However, growing up in Cambodia, she had to start cooking for her family at the age of just nine. Everything she makes is done by hand – dumplings, pastries and cakes – and she has developed quite the cult following on FoodSt.

“When you taste her food, you can taste that it’s homemade,” Gnanadickam says. “You can taste the love in that food. And I think that’s the difference with our products compared to anything that’s commercially made.”

raw raspberry cheesecake
Burcu’s raw raspberry cheesecake.

Burcu comes from a Turkish background. Due to her daughter’s egg and dairy allergies, she had to find alternative ways to cook for her. She discovered that she had a talent for making plant-based desserts, and had already started selling at markets before joining FoodSt. Her cheesecakes, cupcakes and börek (meat-filled flaky pastries) are all hugely popular.

Christopher, from the Philippines, trained at Le Cordon Bleu Sydney and was taught to cook by his mother. Gnanadickam says he makes his Filipino food with a modern twist for FoodSt because he wants to share the warmth and love of his culture through his food.

“We live in such a beautiful, multicultural community,” she says. “This is all about allowing people within our community to share the dishes that are close to their hearts, and that they cook with love.”

FoodSt meals
You might not be able to travel right now, but your taste buds sure can.

Safe, supportive and very satisfying

All FoodSt cooks must hold valid food safety supervisor certificates. “This means that if you were working in a commercial kitchen, they’d be the person supervising food safety,” Gnanadickam explains. “So they’re all trained to the highest level. We also have really strict reporting processes where everything is batch tracked. We’re probably stricter than a lot of other companies, because we know that we’re looking at multiple kitchens.”

FoodSt now has 28 cooks offering more than 100 different meals, and is about to open up recruitment again to grow this number. All ordered food is cooked in small batches every week, as the aim of the business is to avoid over-commercialising and losing that “homemade” flavour. The cooks prepare the food at home, then freeze it before it’s picked up and taken to FoodSt’s warehouse. A third-party accredited courier company then delivers the meals straight to customers’ doors.

Slow-cooked Hungarian beef goulash by Michelle
Slow-cooked Hungarian beef goulash by Michelle.

“We offer employment to those who are talented and passionate about food yet may struggle with traditional workplaces,” Gnanadickam says. “This is a model that can work in every community. Even in regional communities. Our vision, our goal, is to get this into as many communities as we can to empower more people. Whether it’s earning an income by sharing food and doing what you love, or if you’re someone who’s struggling to source food that’s nutritious and tasty. It’s all about supporting each other.”

To find out more about Food St, click here. Delivery is available across NSW, the ACT and Melbourne Metro. You can find out more delivery information here.