While many companies have found themselves struggling to find business during the coronavirus pandemic, some have been able to repurpose or adjust their goals to keep going. Chef on Wheels is one such company based in Kuala Lumpur: they are a catering company run by Seet Wai Song and chef Christine Chua (shown above). Previously they would have been catering for grand events, such as concerts for international music stars, but all that business has gone. So this last year has found them focussing on catering projects to help the needy of Malaysia.
Malaysian businesses are encouraged to run Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs which can take many forms (see foundingbird.com). Chef on Wheels have worked on CSR programs in the past with a company called Young Living Essential Oils, based in Kuala Lumpur. This year, the company decided to expand their work further afield in Malaysia, and Johor Bahru was the lucky recipient of their help. The goal was to prepare 300 meals per day for four days, and distribute the meals to the B40 population, that is the bottom 40% of income earners in Malaysia. And to organise the distribution of food aid, who better to turn to than the Malaysian Red Crescent (MRC)!
If preparing and distributing 1200 meals wasn’t enough, Song and Christine also spent a morning at the Cerebral Palsy centre in Johor Bahru where participants enjoyed some fun time decorating cupcakes. I was double-booked on this day, as I was asked to go with a team from IFRC (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies) to record their activities elsewhere, so I roped in my husband to film the activities at the Cerebral Palsy centre. I was also not involved in the activities on Day 1 (7th April) so have borrowed some photos from Song for this day. All this material has been collated into a video which you can see below.
Here I should first like to introduce you to the business of mass catering…...
Chef on Wheels brought two extra staff with them to help with the food preparation, packing, and distribution. I have already experienced the work of the MRC in food distribution and now understand that there is a lot of physical labour involved in getting food and resources from A to B.
When you become a travelling kitchen, your menu choices are constrained by the purely physical aspects of cooking as everything you need must travel with you. Then you must prepare food which will not go off in the heat of Malaysia, and can be boxed up in the morning and maybe not eaten until the evening, especially as we are now in the holy month of Ramadan. So nasi lemak might be a Malaysian’s first choice, but the addition of coconut milk makes this dish more likely to turn sour. And when cooking for Malaysians, the menu choices also have to take into account all the various dietary restrictions relating to religious observances.
So this is the result: a box of tasty fried chicken, fried tofu, nasi minyak (scented rice), pickles, sambal, and a red apple.
Please click on the links below to learn more about what we did and where we went over these five days…….
Click here to see more about the activities of the Malaysian Red Crescent.
Click here to return to Travels in Malaysia 2021.
Click here to return to Helen Gray’s homepage.