Where normally tens of thousands of portions of food go over the counter every day, there is a yawning emptiness these days: The company restaurants at Volkswagen have been closed since mid-March due to the Corona crisis – and will remain so until further notice. Since then, food has been stacked in the cold store of the Wolfsburg central kitchen, including tens of thousands of servings of ready-to-eat dishes. So that they do not have to be disposed of, Volkswagen donates a large part to the Gifhorner Tafel.
Karsten Lange now knows the way to Gifhorn almost blindly. The Volkswagen employee is currently on the way to the table there in a refrigerated transporter several times a week. He loaded ready-to-eat dishes that were originally cooked for sale in the Volkswagen company restaurants: Lange has 6,000 portions of Bolognese sauce and 5,000 portions of pasta on board – each packed in 3-kilo bags. Another time savoy cabbage vegetables and rice pudding. And on Monday there were 700 liters of wedding soup, which corresponds to about five full bathtubs.
“We cook many dishes that are on the menu in the company restaurants in our central kitchen a few days in advance and then cool them down immediately for storage,” explains Dietmar Schulz, who heads the food production department at the Service Factory. In addition to the central kitchen, this also includes the butcher shop. The food prepared with the so-called cook-and-chill method is usually stable for three weeks.“ Since our company restaurants are closed for at least four weeks, we would have had to dispose of most of the dishes that were already prepared with a heavy heart. We are therefore glad that we have found a grateful buyer in the Gifhorner Tafel. In this way, we can even do something good in these difficult times for society as a whole,” says Schulz.
At Gifhorner Tafel, one of the few facilities of this type still open in the region, those responsible are happy about Volkswagen’s food donation. “This is an absolute highlight for us and helps us a lot in our work,” says chairwoman Edeltraud Sack. The volunteers give part of the meals directly to the needy on site, the remaining portions are distributed to other institutions in the region, such as women’s shelters or to refugee and life aid.
