A Healthy Partnership

HFA have been working with a range of stakeholders across the Hepburn Shire, including Rijk Zwaan, on a large circular economy project and social enterprise called S.H.I.F.T (Sustainable Healthy Integrated Food Towns). This enterprise has created new jobs and business opportunities, will ensure fair prices for local farmers and producers, develop a circular economy, and build a healthier community. 

The first exciting component of S.H.I.F.T is the launch of a new Healthy Lunch Kitchen (HLK). The HLK is a social enterprise run by the team at HFA and it will provide healthy, delicious, chef-prepared lunches to students (and to the staff at Rijk Zwaan) using the wonderful local, seasonal produce of the Hepburn Shire. Rijk Zwaan staff at our Musk location will participate in the HLK pilot as testers, to provide important feedback to the chefs and the team at Health Futures.

The Rijk Zwaan team sit down to a healthy lunch

On March 5, the HLK launched from the Daylesford Primary School, the first school to trial a new healthy lunch service. Dr. Shelley Bowen from Health Futures explains, “This is an exciting day for us at HFA, we are ready to go; we have employed an amazing team including three very experienced local chefs-cooks. The response to this initiative has been extraordinary - our difference is we are “social’ in purpose, and this has attracted some amazing talent for the kitchen. We have local farmers and producers/suppliers networks set up, menus designed, a digital ordering platform built and tested, a great ‘getting started’ communications strategy in place and a child nutrition baseline survey being gathered, in partnership with Deakin University.” 

For more information about HFA, the S.H.I.F.T model and the Healthy Lunch Kitchen please visit https://healthfutures.org.au/

Health Futures Australia's chef, Shane

Sushi rolls