Oswestry community kitchen cooks up exciting expansion plans

OsNosh was set up by brothers, Tom and Ben Wilson last year, cooking 'pay as you feel' meals every Thursday at Holy Trinity Church.

Now they want to establish themselves as an independent community asset and are asking for help to pay the legal costs of the application.

"This is so we can apply on our own for funding to expand OsNosh further, all while feeding more people with food that would otherwise be wasted," Tom said.

He said that OsNosh had been working under the umbrella of Chalk, a local charity in Oswestry tackling social isolation, homelessness and pioneering a ‘furniture alert’ scheme.

"This allowed us to set up as quickly as we did, but now we are ready to branch out on our own. This will allow us to apply for better funding to develop OsNosh, however in the meantime we need help covering the cost of these legalities."

The brothers say their aim is to open the community kitchen more than once a week to provide more chances for people to access lunch.

They also want to be able to teach more people cooking skills and expand its volunteer base.

"We are keen to give more volunteer opportunities to those who might normally struggle, with physical or mental disabilities. We aim to involve the whole community in our project and this money would help us get closer that goal.

"The future vision for OsNosh is that it can run its own business offering catering for events, however this equipment costs an arm and a leg.

"If we can access grants we could look at buying portable equipment such as boards, knifes and an outside cooker. It will allow us to do more events using surplus food and continuing our mission of tackling food waste."

"Ben and I work full time on top of OsNosh in order to sustain lives around it so all the money will be put directly into the project."

The brothers say they would be grateful to anyone who has kitchen equipment and crockery they could donate to the project, which could be handed into OsNosh at Holy Trinity Church on Thursday lunchtimes.

Anyone who would like to donate to the legal costs can do so via www.gofundme.com/f/osnosh.