Meet the dinner ladies

26 Sep 2015

Stay-at-home mums Katherine Westwood and Sophie Gilliat have built a great business delivering tasty meals to Sydneysiders. Here is their story. 

In 2007, two mates and stay-at-home mums Katherine Westwood and Sophie Gilliat decided to launch their own dinner delivery business. They called themselves The Dinner Ladies.

At the time, Katherine and Sophie were creating 10 dinners for 100 people and cooking in the shed in Katherine’s backyard, on two camp stoves.

Fast forward to this year and 12,000 meals are now being delivered each week and the ladies are planning to expand the business interstate. This year, they even appeared on Channel Ten’s Shark Tank, a reality television show where budding entrepreneurs pitch their businesses to investors.

“Sophie and I both fervently believe food should be a great pleasure every day. We want to make it easier for people to eat great food, because it’s easy to eat garbage,” says Katherine. “Cooking can be time-consuming, so the more that we can give that time back to people by taking care of it for them, the happier we are.”

Lately, there’s been a rise in seniors signing up for their services. As Katherine says, many of them have spent their lives “slaving their guts out” while raising their families and working. Now, they want to enjoy the luxury of having someone else prepare their meals.

According to Katherine, lasagne is the most popular dish, although now that the team has moved to a commercial kitchen, they are experimenting with the specials menu. For example, a recent addition is miso marinated tuna with a salad of sugar snaps, edamame and sesame sauce.

“People have more sophisticated tastes now and enjoy good food much more. It's become a bigger part of everyone's lives.”

For more information on the Dinner Ladies and to sign up to their enewsletter, visit: dinnerladies.com.au