New meal service for older borough residents

Tracey Szymanek, founder of Tracey’s Kitchen which provides nutritious home cooked meals for older residents, delivered straight to their home

A new meal service for older residents of the Rochdale borough has been set up with the help of social enterprise Community Catalysts.

Set up by Tracey Szymanek, Tracey’s Kitchen provides nutritious home cooked meals for older residents, delivered straight to their home to warm through.

Tracey currently cooks and delivers on a Sunday, but is looking to expand this to another day in the week.

She said: “My idea came from a cooking class that I used to facilitate. The participants said they would like me to cook for them.

“I am also working on warming the meals up in their homes myself within the Covid guidance; hopefully I will be able to roll out this service when possible.”

Karen Williams, of Community Catalysts Rochdale, said: “Tracey worked really hard to coproduce what older people wanted from meals and from this feedback has created a wide variety of nutritional meals, made only from fresh ingredients in a variety of portion sizes. 

“The meals are reasonably priced, and she delivers them fresh to older people living across the borough. Following the success of the service so far, Tracey has decided to expand a little and would like to start offering a warm up service where she will pop in and warm up meals for those who need that extra support.”

Community Catalysts is a social enterprise working across the UK to try to make sure that people who need care and support to live their lives can get help in ways, times and places that suit them.

Community Catalysts offers free support to those running a community micro-enterprise for older or disabled people, or those interested in starting a new venture- this may be as a sole trader, voluntary group, social enterprise or as a business.

For more information about Community Catalysts, contact Karen Williams on 07880 388478 or karen.williams@communitycatalysts.co.uk