Sharing Kitchen - A Pop-up Peer-to-Peer Meal Prep Experience

Sep 28, 2026

Calgary’s Sharing Kitchen targets transitional youth who need affordable, nutritious meals but face barriers including limited time, insufficient cooking knowledge, and high costs for basic equipment. The solution is a pop-up peer-to-peer meal prep program where participants pay a fee, learn fundamental cooking skills, share a meal together, and take home weekly meals. The vision promotes dignified, food-secure communities through resource sharing, volunteer teaching, local grocery sponsorships, scaled cooking, and kitchen rental partnerships.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryHealthcare

FormatPDF

Pages10

Reading Time25 min

AccessFree to download

The Current Reality

Our Solution

Our Vision

Unique Proposition

How Does It Work?

Experience Takeaways

Partnerships

Launch Plan

Launch Team

Launch Budget

We Need More Help

Calgary’s peer-to-peer, social meal prep experience THE CURRENT REALITY We are targeting youth (adults under 30) that have to cook for themselves, and have the desire to cook and eat affordable, nutritious food. They may be “nest ﬂedglings” moving out of home for the ﬁrst time, may have non-permanent living situations, may lack structured schedules, or may be new to Calgary. We refer to them as“transitional youth”. Youthful people struggle with food security. In order to regularly cook affordable, nutritious meals, they lack: Time Knowledge Equipment 69% of survey respondents identiﬁed time as a barrier to preparing food Half of all young Calgarians surveyed rated their knowledge of food preparation at a 3 out of 5 or lower Cost of purchasing basic equipment, excluding major appliances, is upwards of $300 BUT. . . Despite one quarter of youthful Calgarians living alone, youth place a high value on food experiences in their social lives: 85% of all respondents rated food 3 out of 5 or higher in importance for socialization, and half go out to eat at least once a week. OUR SOLUTION The Sharing Kitchen: A pop-up peer-to-peer meal prep experience. For a reasonable fee participants go home with a week’s meals, knowledge of fundamental cooking skills, and the opportunity to get more out of the program by sharing what they learned. OUR VISION In 5 years, we want Calgary to have digniﬁed food for everyone. This looks like a Calgary that is food secure, shares resources, and builds community around food. UNIQUE PROPOSITION The Sharing Kitchen is a platform where participants gain asocial experience around food and go home with fresh meals, recipe ideas, kitchen skills, and conﬁdence. Cooking classes, meal prep, and meal-kit services already exist in Calgary. This demonstrates a demand for these types of services. The Sharing Kitchen is unique because it adds peer-to-peer teaching and socializing to valuable meal prep and time saving skills. Standard cooking classes in Calgary can cost upwards of $40 per hour. The Sharing Kitchen will keep costs low by incorporating volunteer teaching, sponsorships from local grocers, cooking at scale, and kitchen rental partnerships. HOW DOES IT WORK? A participant pays $50-$75 for a Sharing Kitchen experience at a pop-up location. A facilitator is present to organize and facilitate facility requirements, go over food safety, assigning roles to participants such as cooking and clean-up, and helping. After practicing valuable cooking skills in a fun group environment of 10-20, participants share a meal together and each get to take home 5 meals for the week. Participants can also become a facilitator if they attend 5 sessions. The facilitator can host a session of their choice and gets the experience for free. Participants rate the facilitator as in popular apps such as AirBnB and Uber. Experience Takeaways Participants will walk away with one or more of the following skills ● Fundamentals of salt, fat, acid, heat ● Knife skills ● Shopping local ● Using ‘ugly’ produce ● Eating seasonally ● Minimizing food waste PARTNERSHIPS LAUNCH PLAN | STEP 1 | Develop meal plans with local partner and design recipe card takeaways (May 2019) | | --- | --- | | STEP 2 | Develop sponsorships with local grocery businesses (May-June 2019) | | STEP 3 | Run one program per month in the summer (JuneAugust 2019) | | STEP 4 | App development (August 2019 and onwards) | Develop membership plan (August 2019) LAUNCH TEAM Colin King Outdoor Leadership and Environmental Education Kitchen Facilitator Andrea Johancsik, Environmental Science and Education Communications and Outreach Lead Daniel Benner Urban Studies and Sustainability Partnership Coordinator and Strategy Lead Katrina Tabuli Information Design & Social Innovation Education Information Designer and Marketing Lead LAUNCH BUDGET (May-August 2019) $500 $500 $600 $2200 $120

FAQs

Who is the Sharing Kitchen designed for in Calgary?

It targets transitional youth—adults under 30—who have to cook for themselves and want affordable, nutritious food, including those new to Calgary or moving out of home.

What problems does the proposal address?

It addresses food insecurity barriers such as lack of time, limited knowledge of food preparation, and the cost of purchasing basic cooking equipment.

How does the program work for participants?

Participants pay $50–$75 for a pop-up experience, practice cooking in a group, share a meal together, and take home 5 meals for the week.

Sep 28, 2026

Uploaded by Indoniesian Boy