The social enterprise empowers refugees while building a sustainable business. Co-founder and CEO Lim Yuet Kim explains how.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” said Winston Churchill. The former British prime minister reportedly said the now-famous line when he was trying to pull together countries to establish the United Nations after the Second World War, the deadliest conflict in history.
More than half a century later, the world is facing another crisis that's taking a huge toll on humanity. Lim Yuet Kim, the co-founder and CEO of PichaEats, a social enterprise empowering Malaysia's refugee community through its food business, is taking the crisis as a challenge to innovate faster.
Since establishing PichaEats in 2016, Lim and her co-founders Suzanne Ling and Lee Swee Lin—all of whom are Gen.T honourees—have served over 135,000 meals cooked by people from refugee communities in Malaysia. At present, they support 14 such chefs, many of whom hail from war-torn countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine.
“We chose food as our business because everyone needs to eat, and it's also a universal language,” says Lim. “We wanted to tell stories of other cultures through food and change people’s perspectives about certain cultures and communities, while also helping the refugees build a stable livelihood for themselves in Malaysia.”
Food As A Universal Language
Each chef has his or her own menu of dishes to cook, but PichaEats also employs a group of local Malaysian chefs to ideate and experiment with fusion food recipes. “We provide this as well to open people’s eyes to how different cuisines and cultures can come together.”
As Malaysia is not part of the United Nations Refugee Convention, it technically doesn’t recognise refugees as asylum seekers. This means refugees in Malaysia are not allowed to be formally employed. “While Malaysia has very open borders, the message our country sends to refugees is, put simply, we welcome you, but you can’t work,” says Lim.
Therefore, to work around the system, the 14 chefs PichaEats supports prepare the food in their own homes according to strict quality standards. The dishes are then picked up by local part-timers, who deliver them to the final destination—be it an event or a customer’s home. The chefs earn their income based on the number of orders they receive.
See also: Picha Project Evolves To A New Identity, PichaEats