Student meal boxes officially out! 

Thrifty Chef is a new project that provides £3 meal boxes, covering at least 2 portions.  

As Edward Wilkinson, the CEO of this new business, said: ‘We provide meal boxes for students, it provides all the ingredients needed to make two meals each week and they are low-cost meals that use surplus and class two fruit and veg, and it is all vegetarian.’ 

They officially launched on Friday 27^th, and from now they will be distributing their boxes by the Newcastle University Students’ Union every Friday from four until six o’clock. 

The box comes in all recyclable packaging to reduce the carbon footprint with all the ingredients and a recipe card, which contains the method, nutrition facts and storage details. 

More information available on the Thrifty Chef Instagram profile.

However, although the main message of the project is sustainability and the reduction of food waste, some customers also found it beneficial in terms of effective cooking and general affordability. 

“I think it’s quite an efficient way of doing it, cause going out and planning meals, and going out and buying every individual thing in different shops can be quite time-consuming and stressful, a bit difficult, and this is really good, it’s everything in one place, it’s nice and easy,” as Sebastian, 1st-year medicine student said. 

Jessica, 3rd-year biochemistry student, also agreed: 

“I think, especially in the first year I know a lot of students struggled in terms of getting ingredients and actually cooking, I know in first year I did a lot of Uber Eats, so I feel like being given like, first of all it’s cheap and given the ingredients, given the recipe, I feel like it will help the students just cook more and just to be a bit more sustainable.”

Yesterday the meal was butternut squash pasta, including some tomatoes, cashew nuts and lentils, and the meal is going to be different every week. But, according to Edward, nuts and gluten will probably be a common thing, as they are quite good sources of protein and natural fats. Most of the supply is provided by Granger Market.