Husband-and-wife team, Mizan and Lutfan Rahman
Nancy’s Larder, which opened in the area on Monday, 8 June, is run by husband-and-wife team Mizan and Lutfan Rahman.
The franchise, which delivers hot, home-cooked meals to customers initially started up in Hull in 2018.
The Barking and Dagenham company is now the latest branch in the franchise to launch in the UK.
Mr Rahman said: “We have always had a passion for the creation of food, especially desserts, but our dream has always been to help others and to make people happy.”
“We wanted to use the joy we gained from making desserts and use that as the inspiration for creating healthy, tasty lunches and dinners that can improve the lives of people in our communities.
“It isn’t just about delivering a nutritional hot meal every day, though that is important. Often our staff are the only people some of our customers will see and chat to for days at a time.
“It is crucial for the mental health of vulnerable or elderly people to have regular human contact and, of course, having someone check on your loved one daily is really important.”
Dishes on the menu, which changes every week, include lamb hotpot, sausage and mash, cottage pie and fish in parsley sauce.
The main meals cost £5.50 and puddings an extra £1.50.
Founder Matt Williamson
Company director, Matt Williamson, founded the franchise three years ago following his mum’s experiences, who suffers with dementia.
Mr Williamson said: “As we’ve progressed, I’ve had phone call’s from all over the country asking for the services so what we’ve done is put out to franchise and very quickly Mizan and Lutfan got in contact.
“Both very community spirited and wanted to do something for their community and it’s turned into a lovely working partnership.
“We do aim at the elderly, people who are struggling to feed themselves from when meals on wheels stopped being provided by the council through lack of funding and various reasons.
“There’s alot of frozen food offerings and things like that but there’s a huge section of society who that doesn’t work for.
“I started the company because my mum had dementia and to be quite frank, we were getting through more microwaves than we were meals to be honest.
“She’d leave a fork in there, put some foil in there, under cook it, over cook it or just not bother and I thought there has to be a better way- that’s how Nancy’s Larder was born.”
Contact Nancy’s Larder by calling 0203 302 6866 or visit the website for more information.
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Tags: Barking, Barking and Dagenham
