Costa Supports FareShare’s mission to rescue surplus food used to cook free, nutritious meals for Victorians doing it tough.

View all articles

“Every year, 3.6 million Australians will experience food insecurity. But, over the same period, we’ll also waste more than 360kg of food for every man, woman and child in the nation.

This doesn’t make any sense.  FareShare is tackling the tragedy head on by rescuing surplus, quality food from supermarkets, farmers and other businesses and cooking it into nutritious meals.

FareShare operates Australia’s largest charity kitchen from Melbourne and with the help of 850 regular volunteers, FareShare cooks 5,000 free meals a day for charities such as soup vans, homeless shelters, women’s refuges and community food banks.

FareShare’s new production kitchen, capable of cooking 5 million meals a year, will open in Brisbane in 2018 as part of an exciting new collaboration with Foodbank”

Costa is proudly supporting FareShare’s mission trialing nutrient rich mushroom stems to meals where possible into some of the 5,000 free meals prepared each day.  Jose Cambon, State Manager Vic. & Tas. of Costa Mushrooms joined Marcus Godhino Chief Executive Officer of FareShare in the kitchen to trial the first batch of stems from Costa Mushrooms in meals prepared on the day.

“The chefs – and volunteers – have been thrilled to add mushrooms to everything we have been cooking this week.  They have really given the quiches an extra lift”. 

Costa is proud to support FareShares commitment to feeding nutritious hearty meals to those in need.

Employees at Costa Mushroom farm are energised by Miguel Maestre’s visit

View all articles

On Tuesday 27th February, Costa Mushrooms held an employee engagement day to celebrate the cultural diversity of the Mernda team.  Miguel Maestre, energetic Celebrity Chef & Australian Mushroom Ambassador entertained staff demonstrating how to create his famous Mushroom “Alla Maestre” Paella dish with help from volunteers from the crowd. 

In keeping with the Spanish theme, we had Simply Spanish, award winning local Paella company on-site serving delicious vegetarian and seafood paella in their impressive 2 metre Paella Pan. Delicious churros with fresh strawberries and luscious dipping chocolate were “a treat” also enjoyed by all!

In addition, multiple prize raffles with hampers and personally autographed Miguel’s Tapas cookbooks were won by employees on the day.  Costa produce bags containing fresh Costa Produce were given to all employees on the day.

This event was a fantastic opportunity to engage almost 500 employees who grow, harvest, pack and distribute Fresh Costa Mushrooms 365 days a year. It was a novel way to reward and celebrate our people.   Miguel’s personal stories explained his love for food and cooking.  He showed empathy with his audience when he spoke of arriving in Australia 17 years ago with no money and little English.  Considering our culturally diverse work force , Miguel was able to reach everyone with his energy and positivity.  It was great to hear him speak about the importance of getting fresh ingredients into people’s meals and how easy it is to achieve! 

NOW Festival Nagambie March 2018

View all articles

This year, Nagambie on Water celebrated its 11th annual community festival with Costa a proud supporter for its 10th consecutive year.   Costa operates  & supports regional communities  in which it operates and Nagambie is one of them.  The Nagambie farm plays a vital role in the making of compost for Costa’s mushroom growing operations located in Mernda & Yarrambat growing over 250T of mushrooms per week.

The NOW Festival provides a fun and entertaining weekend offering 3 days of jam packed activities for the locals and festival attendees.  In amongst the events is the “Provincial Plate” fundraiser dinner held each year to raise much needed funds for the local Nagambie hospital.  This year in excess of $2,000 was raised to support the extension project.

Each year,  the NOW festival is organised by a committed team of volunteers who contribute a tremendous amount of hours and effort to ensure its success.  This year is no exception to their efforts with yet another successful event achieved.

Among the many events and attractions running throughout the festival, the Costa Community Canoe Challenge is one not to be missed.  The canoe challenge offers a unique opportunity for festivalgoers to meetand greet, or even compete with, some of our fantastic emergency services personnel.

This year, the Costa Community Canoe Challenge took place on Saturday March 3rdwith a team of 8 Costa employees  volunteering to participate in the challenge and this year securing second place.