Chef launches £5 ready-made meal service amid cost of living crisis

Chef Damian Wawrzyniak has launched a nationwide £5 ready-made meal delivery service designed to help cash-strapped customers with no time to cook.

The scheme, available via pay-as-you-go or subscription, offers up to four meals a week, starting every Thursday.

Menu options focus on easy, Polish-Italian dishes, such as spaghetti bolognese, lasagne, and pulled beef and creamy mash, and new dishes will be added each week.

Wawrzyniak, who runs the House of Feasts restaurant in Peterborough, told The Caterer that it was a challenge to keep prices low when production costs remained high.

He said: "All the wheat-based dishes, oil, fish and chicken [have had a] massive price hike. Chicken [prices] are over the moon at the moment. We had to sacrifice some things. We use very simple ingredients, but we prep everything from scratch."

It is his priority to ensure that "every single meal from the weekly meal plan is £5 each, and this will not change".

He believes that the country will be in a state of recession for the next "six to eight months" but hopes to alleviate some of the difficulties for "hardworking people who have no time to cook" with the return of his ready-meal programme, which first ran during lockdown.

The Polish-born chef has been involved in coordinating the delivery of first aid kits, toiletries, sleeping bags and clothes to the Poland-Ukraine border over the past few months.

Wawrzyniak is also due to open a second restaurant in Peterborough serving affordable, deli-style sandwiches in March 2023. He described the project, which he has been working on for over a year, as a "smaller version" of House of Feasts.

He said: "The prices must be stable beginning of next year, so I will just keep the head above the water for now, introduce affordable meals, be good in the restaurant, get some local clients, and see how the future will go."