May 18, 2023
Endeavour Foundation’s Kingaroy Kitchen hosted visitors, family and friends during a special open day on Thursday morning.
Did you know the facility, in Kingaroy Street, has been operating for 35 years?
One of its workers, Davy Simmons, has been there all that time! Another employee, Kerrie Burrows, has been working there for 31 years.
Site manager Mistrel Badesso said the idea of the open day was to showcase what the kitchen was doing now and to highlight some of its plans.
There are renovations already happening, including the creation of a new packing and storage area, and a new oven will be installed in the current kitchen.
“We are also hoping to build a new kitchen out the back to produce biscuits on a larger scale,” Mistrel said.
“But we will still keep the other kitchen in operation, and maintain the home-style feeling.”
Mistrel said the Kingaroy Kitchen now runs the canteen at the Coolabunia Saleyards every month, which is allowing its employees to learn new skills.
Some have also begun a Certificate II in Cooking at the Kingaroy TAFE College.
Bunnings Kingaroy have also come on board to help create a cottage garden behind the kitchen to enable it to use its own produce.
There are also plans to have a stall at BaconFest.
The Kingaroy Kitchen produces an amazing 4050 biscuits every day as well as 395 jars of preserves and 180 fruit cakes every month.
It also serves an average of 27 meals every day at its café, although sometimes this can be as much as 40!
The café is open for meals at 17 Kingaroy Street from 8:00am to 2:00pm on weekdays.
What a fantastic facility which started from a group of young local Kingaroy women getting together to make traditional-recipe homecooked bikkies, cakes, jams, chutneys, pickles and other goodies for a street stall they ran to raise funds to replace an old broken-down refrigerator in one of the care residences.
The tradition proudly continues at NDVR Kingaroy Kitchen where the amazing staff work constantly to provide meaningful, rewarding and beneficial social and work activities for the wonderful participants with varying disabilities to produce the best of a wide range of traditional home-cooked baking and cooking anyone could wish for.
Do yourself and your friends a huge favour. Check out the on-site café for smoko or lunch sometime; the pies and sausage rolls are terrific as are the daily specials.
PS. Congratulations everybody! You all do a wonderful and special job!!