Restaurant and Food Sector Celebrations of Jobs and Social Businesses

several people have mentioned restauranters that might kick start social business and job creation - so with yunus centre announcing an official restauranter sb venture it seemed time to send a mail round checking who's still interested in this area

as well as yunus center announcement below

1 washington DC has long advanced dc soup kitchen - a model that trains former prison inamtes to become caterers, who then practice either at soup kitechens or as restauranters; I believe it also collects food from supermarkets that would otherwise be wasted

2 it was said that as the UK kickstarts its half billion funding of social projects most replicable across communities, that it also aims to run youth centre hubs where franchsies can be incubated, and tv chef and fight-obesity in school meals leader jamie oliver has been mentioned as up for joining in; moreover anyone who has studied the failed opportunity of the bbc and other leading public broadcasters to lead job creation debates round social business know that eg the BBC is neurotic about the risk of giving free publicity to a commerce and therefore barely dares cover the social business debate in most sectors- however for some reason celebrity chefs (and so restaurantion) are one of the few sectors the bbc has a history of covering

3 paris yunus book readers mentioned that one of the sub job creation networks of europes leading microlending models www.adie.org involves catering

4 New York CollaborationCafe has mentioned that bloomberg successfully opened up several new york parks so that local catering could start up provided they also took responsibility for uptake of the park - this has actually made several parks social again that wer5e previously preety dicey to go in except when crowds were there

5 I am amazed at how many thousands of lunches are served by pop-up vans in the MIT region - and wonder if this can be a job creating wave in many more places;

6 my guess is that at least 1 in 6 ideas that youth (student competition) entrepreneurs come up with interface with food whether it is cooked or helping agrucultural cooperatives etc develop shared farmers markets or other such community-centred platforms

7 also food value chains - : danone and whole foods supermarkets are pivotal to arguably the greatest yunus french and us sb "branded" partners- a significant number of BRACs members are sustained round redesigning food value chains, and as a developing world issue this relates to sarkozy's b20 food summit

please introduce yoursledf to this list if this theme is one we could be building an ii8regular newsletter on, or if you see other ways to hub it

one approach to future issues of journal of social business that I am sure zasheem and I would be interested to explore is take say 3 sectors and publish job creating ideas on them- do tell us if you think we could get an array of interesting papers if resturants (or other food concepts) were one of te first sectors to cover

www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=213191

TheDaily StarThursday, December 8, 2011
Japan'sleading food and beverage brand Watami Groupyesterday signed a joint venture agreement with the Yunus Centre to establish a social businessin the restaurant sector in Bangladesh.
A number of restaurants would be set up across the country under the joint venture that aims to produce quality foodthrough its outlets.
Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, chairman of Yunus Centre, and Miki Watanabe, chief executive officer of Watami Group, signed the agreementat Yunus Centre in Dhaka.
The objective of the social business joint ventureis to create jobs, provide healthy food and promote local cuisine and training for food service professionals, said the Nobel laureate.
The social business pioneer also said the restaurants would not be only set up in the capital city, but also in many other citiesacross the country.
The Japanese company will provide training and management skills to produce quality dishes at affordable pricesin order to set up the first restaurant in Bangladesh by 2014, said Watanabe.
He also said the venture could generate about 3,000 jobs. He also showed interest to replicate the social business venture in other markets where his company operates, if its Bangladesh's venture becomes successful.
The joint venture aims to spread the business in the rural parts of Bangladesh as well and also setting up training schoolsfor young people to become professional chefs for both domestic and international employment. As a social business, neither Watami Group nor Yunus Centrewill be receiving any profitfrom this joint venture.
TheYunus Centreis the global hub for all social businessesaround the world, including microcredit, health care services and environment.
Watami Groupis the top food and beverage brand in Japan.The company has grown into 600 restaurants in Japan and 30 other outlets overseas in a short span of 25 years.