Meet Marishka, SRCHC’s Kitchen Coordinator!

Ever wonder who our customers are? SRCHC has been purchasing from FoodReach for a few years now and is one of the many non-profit organizations that we support. Check out our conversation with Marishka to learn more!

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What is your favourite vegetable?
Although there are many vegetables to choose from, I would say tomatoes are my favourite.

Tell us about your food programs.

At the moment, the biggest food program we have is our community meal, which has grown to roughly 200 people a week. We prepare a takeaway meal, which is a pretty robust/challenging program, but also a pretty rewarding program in that we can reach that many people. It started out being about 100 people a week, and we’re coming up to our second year. We started it during the pandemic and it was supposed to be a sit-down indoor community meal, but due to the pandemic, that was not possible. We also do cooking programs which are my favourite as we cook with a group of people for about 6 weeks. We’ve been doing it virtually and it can be a senior’s cooking group or parents and kids cooking group and we’ll make a healthy meal every week and cook virtually which is very fun. Lastly, we serve other programs like the Tai Chi program and have oranges out for them. There is also a youth cooking program that runs for about 12 weeks and is connected to mental health and food, and culturally engaging with food and understanding how food makes you feel. 

What are some staple items that you order through FoodReach? What type of meals do you like to prepare with those items?

I think the thing that I order most by far is oranges, because they’re super easy to store and hand out safely. People seem to love them and whenever I switch it up, people will ask “where are the oranges?” Also, when it comes to other vegetables, I order a lot of cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions. I also get all of my meat through FoodReach and it is really helpful. I used to get it from Costco and the quality of the FoodReach meat and how it’s packaged has made cooking for 200 people so much easier. Especially since FoodReach offers Halal meat and a lot of our clients are on a Halal diet, I would say that the meat has been essential to our programming. In terms of meals, certain things are easier to prepare than others so we do a lot of pasta and stir fry with rice. Especially in the summer, there are a lot of pasta salads and grain salads. 

How has FoodReach impacted your organization and your clients?

I would say working with FoodReach is pretty amazing and the customer service is great, Lianne and Beth are so helpful. Being able to get high-quality food that is appropriate to the communities we serve and packaged in a way that is easy to use for a program like ours has such a big impact when I’m in the kitchen. We also get the items delivered a day before our meal program so the produce and meat are always incredibly fresh. FoodReach is also very reliable — when I order from other suppliers, it’s not always consistent and you don’t know what the quality will be like. But the quality from FoodReach has been pretty great, with very few issues. 

Why did you choose to work with FoodReach as opposed to another food supplier?

Kathleen who is the health promoter that I work with has worked with FoodReach before doing a healthy kid’s program so she passed it on. As I got to know more and more about the organization and how it was connected to the Toronto poverty reduction strategy, it’s just such a great organization that helps access to healthy food. The thing that really stands out about FoodReach is just how available the staff are and how great the customer support is. If there is ever an issue, Beth is on it so quickly, even if she doesn’t have a solution right away, she’ll give me as much information as she can. This is something you don’t get at all with other food distributors and I don’t feel like FoodReach is constantly trying to sell me stuff which a lot of food suppliers do because they need to meet sales quotas. I really appreciate the fact that FoodReach is trying to support our programs the best they can. 

If there is one word that sums up your experience with us, what would it be and why?

Honestly, great is the word that I would use. It’s pretty great working with FoodReach and it makes my job a little easier — which I really appreciate because it can get wild trying to organize all this food for so many people. Overall, it has been a wonderful experience!