Plenty of answers, right here
About Plenty
We chose the name Plenty because it means ‘more than enough’. This is our core belief at Plenty – that there is more than enough to go around. It’s not that the world doesn’t have the food and funds needed to make sure everyone has a meal to eat. What needs to change is the way we collectively use and distribute our natural and financial resources for the common good.
We’re starting local. Did you know that despite being one of the wealthiest countries in the world, 3.3 million Australians live below the poverty line and 1.2 million Australian children regularly go without access to fresh fruit and vegetables because their families cannot afford to buy enough food? We believe that no one should have to go hungry. That’s why we’re using our meal gifting service to generate funds to feed our local community.
We get it, it can be confusing. You don’t see an enterprise like Plenty every day. Plenty is one of a small number of social enterprises in Australia that use commercial tactics to generate profits to improve an aspect of society. In our case, we’re using our meal gifting service to generate profits to fight food insecurity in Western Australia.
3.3 million Australians live below the poverty line, and this number is growing. In 2022, over 2 million households in Australia experienced severe food insecurity. These households reduced their food intake, skipped meals, or ate lower quality or unhealthy food just to get by. In Australia, sixty per cent of households experiencing food insecurity will go a whole day without eating at least once a week. This affects over 1.2 million Aussie kids. This number is distressing. Rather than just give lip service to the issue, we want to do something about it. Our hope is that you do too. This is why we exist.
The profits from our meal gifting service are distributed to our Community Program Partners – charities that operate food relief programs in Western Australia. These organisations rely on donations and grants in order to continue to serve some of the most vulnerable members of our community. This is how Plenty’s profits are best utilised to fight food insecurity in Western Australia.
The process
The first thing to ask is: Does the special person I would like to send a Plenty meal gift to live within Plenty’s delivery radius? You can check this by heading to our ‘Gift a Meal’ page on our website, type your recipient’s postcode into our ‘Postcode Delivery’ box and click ‘CHECK’.
Once you’ve confirmed that we deliver to your recipient’s area, you’ll see the meal gift options available. Choose a gift according to how many people you are sending your meal gift to. Our meal gift pricing is $110 for a family meal (serves four adults), $70 for a meal for two and $70 for a meal gift of two meals for one V.L.P. (Very. Loved. Person.). These prices include delivery.
You can gift multiple meals to a recipient by changing the quantity before ‘adding to cart’ and your recipient can redeem their Plenty meals, as they wish.
Once you’ve selected the value of your meal gift and entered all of the information we need from you, you’re invited to write a personalised message to go with your meal gift (if you so wish). Once payment is received, your job is done and we do the rest.
We don’t ask you for your recipient’s delivery address. That’s something we confirm with them when they book their delivery date with us. All we need from you is their name, email address and a mobile phone number (just in case our email ends up in their spam folder!).
We’ll send your gift recipient an email (and a cheerful follow up text message) from Plenty letting them know that you’ve purchased them a thoughtful and delicious Plenty meal experience.
Your gift recipient then jumps on the Plenty Website ‘Redeem a Meal’ page to select their meal from our seasonal meal gift menu and choose a delivery date that suits them best.
It’s as simple as that.
When you’re purchasing a meal gift for someone we only need your recipient’s name, email address and mobile phone number so that we can get in touch with them to arrange for their meal selection and gift delivery. This is when we clarify which address they would like their meal gift delivered to. Having their mobile number as a second point of contact is helpful if our initial email is redirected to their junk mail folder.
We have partnered with the lovely Ros Mansfield of catering firm Food by Ros to prepare our unique meal gifts. Ros has a passion for cooking and a gift for creating some of the most delicious comfort foods that we’ve had the privilege of enjoying.
Ros will prepare your meal gift to order with fresh, local ingredients and have it chilled and ready on the nominated delivery day. There is almost nothing left for the gift recipient to do except reheat, serve and enjoy!
Yay! You’ve received a thoughtful and nourishing gift from someone who really cares about you.
We’re so glad you’re here visiting our FAQs page.
Your next step is to visit our ‘Redeem a Meal’ page where you’ll be asked to choose a meal from our delicious seasonal meal gift menu. We offer family meals, meals for two and meal packages for one. Once you’ve made your selection you’ll be asked to nominate your preferred delivery date.
At check out, enter the unique number from your meal gift card found in your “You’ve been gifted a Plenty meal” email to redeem the meal that has so kindly been gifted to you.
If you’d like to upgrade your meal size, or purchase a second meal while you’re there, you can absolutely do so. You’ll just be asked to pay the difference by credit card when checking out.
It’s very important that you tell us about any allergies or intolerances that you or your family members have. While we’ve done all we can to create a yummy menu with gluten-free and nut-free options, unfortunately we currently don’t have the capacity to be able to cater for all allergies and dietary requirements. We’re working to expand our allergy-friendly range over time. Your meal gift card is valid for three years. Please check in again soon to see if we’ve got a meal that meets your needs.
Your meal gift will be freshly prepared, ready for delivery, on the date that you’ve nominated. This means not only will your meal gift be super fresh and ready for you to reheat and enjoy, you can also refrigerate it for up to three days before heating and consuming your meal.
We do ask that someone is home to receive the meal from Plenty during the delivery window selected on your delivery date. The reason is that unlike a bunch of flowers that can be left on the doorstep, our fresh meals are chilled and need to be refrigerated as soon as possible to keep them fresh and safe to eat. Having someone home to receive the gift also means that we can reduce our packaging (removing the need for boxes, insulation liners and ice bricks) which is kinder to our environment and also keeps our operating costs down (and the profits for distributing to our Community Program Partners up!).
We’ll be in touch the day before your scheduled delivery to give you a better idea of what time we’ll be dropping off your meal gift so you’re not waiting around for us for too long.
We’ll make sure that all of your meal gift ingredients are listed and that there are clear instructions on how to reheat and serve your meal gift.
If you’re still having trouble navigating how to redeem your meal gift, please don’t hesitate to call us on 1300 588 052 between 8 am and 5 pm Monday to Friday (AWST). One of our helpful team members can talk you through the process. Alternatively, you can email hello@plentygifting.com.au and provide us with your best contact number and we’ll call you as soon as we can during business hours.
We hope you really enjoy your Plenty experience! Let us know by dropping us an email at hello@plentygifting.com.au or tag us in a post on Instagram, @plentygiftingau. We’d love to hear from you!
With any other business, unredeemed gift card funds are collected by the business and the gift you had hoped your recipient would buy for themselves from you never eventuates. Plenty has a much better solution for this eternal gift card problem.
When a Plenty meal gift is left unredeemed by a recipient for a period of more than three years, the total gift amount (minus a small administration fee so that we can make this happen) goes to our Community Program Partners. This means that even though your gift recipient never redeemed their meal gift from you, your gift has gone on to provide many meals for people in need in the local community. A Plenty meal gift is never wasted!
Absolutely! When you proceed to checkout, you’ll be asked to use your individual meal gift card code to redeem your meal (you will find this code in your “You’ve been gifted a Plenty meal” email from us). $70, the cost of the meal for two, will be debited from your $110 meal gift card. You’ll have $40 remaining to redeem against another Plenty meal, whenever you’re ready.
You sure can! Upon checking out, you’ll be asked to enter the unique code from your meal gift card to redeem your $110 meal gift (you will find this code in your “You’ve been gifted a Plenty meal” email from us). Then you’ll just need to pay the remaining $10 using your credit card. All sorted!
For sure! Upon selecting your family meal and checking out, you’ll be asked to enter the unique code from your meal gift card to redeem your $70 gift (you will find this code in your “You’ve been gifted a Plenty meal” email from us). Then you’ll just need to pay the remaining $40 using your credit card. It’s that easy.
We see you. Plenty’s meals are absolutely delicious, generously portioned and made fresh to order, with nothing left for you to do but to reheat, serve and enjoy. Sometimes it’s handy to have a meal in the fridge, ready to go.
If you live within Plenty’s Perth delivery radius and you’d like to take a night off from cooking and avoid the pitfalls of takeaway fast foods, you can order a meal for yourself on our ‘Redeem a Meal‘ page. Rather than using a meal gift card to redeem your meal, you can pay for your meal in full by credit card when checking out. There’s one less meal to worry about!
Dietary requirements & allergies
You don’t have to do a thing. One of the great things about sending someone a Plenty meal gift is that they get to choose their meal gift themselves based on their own preferences and dietary requirements. And when they order their meal gift, it’s also our job to check for allergies and dietary requirements to make sure that the meal they’ve chosen will be suitable for their needs.
While we’ve done all we can to create a yummy meal gift menu with gluten-free and nut-free options, unfortunately we don’t have the capacity to be able to cater for a wide range of allergies at the current time. We’re working to expand our allergy-friendly range over time. Your meal gift card is valid for three years. Please check in again soon to see if we’ve got a meal that meets your needs. Alternatively, if you’d prefer not to wait, you can re-gift your meal gift card to someone who could really do with a homely meal right now. Your Plenty meal gift need never go to waste.
Delivery
In an effort to maximise our community impact and minimise our environmental impact, our meals are delivered fresh and chilled in a recyclable paper bag. Dispensing with Styrofoam boxes, wool insulation blankets and ice packs means lower operating costs and much less packaging. But what it also means is that someone needs to be available to receive your meal gift delivery and pop it straight into a refrigerator to keep it fresh and fantastic.
We can deliver to your home address, to your work, to a neighbour or to anyone you know who can be trusted to receive your delivery and pop it in the fridge for you (and not have a nibble – it’ll be tempting!).
We start our deliveries at 12 noon on Wednesday afternoons and will provide you with an accurate ETA the day before delivery so that you’re not waiting around all afternoon for us. Barring nightmarish traffic jams or delivery van breakdowns (heaven forbid!), we’ll be aiming to deliver your meal within 15 minutes either side of the ETA we’ve provided.
If you’ve already arranged for delivery to your home address and have realised that you need to duck out for school pick up, or for whatever reason you won’t be able to receive your delivery in person as planned, you can pop an insulated shopping bag at your door and we will place your meal gift into your bag, zip it up and leave it on your doorstep for you. We’ll let you know what time this delivery was made, but we can’t stress enough that this is a very temporary solution to keeping your meal gift fresh and fabulous (and fit for human consumption). Your meal gift will still need to be refrigerated ASAP!*
No one home and no insulated bag left out? Unfortunately we’ll be unable to deliver your meal gift.*
But we’ll do everything we can to let you know how your delivery is tracking and when you can expect us, to keep the wait time to as small a window as possible and make receiving your delivery as easy for you as we can.
*Please read our Terms and Conditions for further details on our meal gift deliveries.
We’re in the early stages of refining our meal delivery service here at Plenty. To minimise our costs and maximise the profits we generate for our Community Program Partners, we collate all of our weekly orders to have your meal gifts prepared fresh, ready for our Wednesday delivery day (by far our favourite day of the week!).
We’re working hard to grow Plenty to a point where we can expand our delivery radius and add extra delivery days to our service. Every meal gift order placed with Plenty moves us closer to these goals. Thank you for being patient with us and for supporting us in these early days.
Our aim is to offer a meal gifting service that best serves you, whether you’re looking to gift a meal or if you’ve received one. If you’d like to see us offer something we currently don’t, or if you’ve got some genius ideas about how we can improve our service, please let us know! We’d love to hear from you. Send us an email to hello@plentygifting.com.au.
We’re really sorry, but at the moment we can only deliver meal gifts to gift recipients who live within our Perth delivery radius. Thank you for being so understanding while we’re in the early stages of building our new meal gifting service.
It is definitely worth dropping us a line to let us know where you would have liked to have sent your meal gift. If we know that there are suburbs in high demand that are currently outside our delivery radius, we can look at adding them to our current delivery run.
We do want to let you know though, that we have big plans to expand our delivery radius (and even offer our meal gifting service in other capital cities around the country!). The more we grow, the greater our impact, so watch this space! Sign up to our emails (at the very bottom of this webpage) and we’ll let you know when we’ve added new suburbs to our delivery radius.
Absolutely! You can order a meal gift for someone living inside our Perth delivery radius from anywhere in the world. All you need is a smart device or a computer, and access to the internet. This is perfect for friends and family living interstate or overseas who’d otherwise have loved to cook a meal for someone who could really do with a helping hand but can’t, because they’re so far away. Plenty to the rescue!
Important legal stuff
Unfortunately we’re unable to offer refunds for meal gifts purchased on our website. Sorry! (You can read more about our refunds policy in our Terms and Conditions.)
We aim to please with a seasonal menu of delicious comfort foods, packed full of flavour and fresh ingredients, but if your gift recipient doesn’t wish to select a meal from this menu they have two options. They can regift the meal to someone else, OR they don’t have to do anything at all:
We’ll be adding new items to our meal gift menu as we grow, and we’ll keep them informed, so something will hopefully tickle their fancy. But even if they never redeem their meal gift, when a Plenty meal gift is left unredeemed by a recipient for a period of more than three years, the total gift amount (minus a small administration fee so that we can make this happen) goes to our Community Program Partners. This means that even though your gift recipient never redeemed their meal gift from you, your gift has gone on to provide many meals for people in need in the local community. Either way, a Plenty meal gift is never wasted!
You can view our Terms and Conditions here.
You can view our Privacy Policy here.
Profit-for-purpose
A social enterprise is an organisation that applies commercial strategies to maximise improvements in human and environmental well-being. Plenty is a social enterprise with no shareholders or investors. We run our meal gifting service for the express purpose of fighting food insecurity in Western Australia.
After all the costs involved in getting our meal gifts to market, every cent left is directed to our Community Program Partners to fund the food relief programs that they operate. Plenty exists for the express purpose of fighting food insecurity in our community.
We use commercial tactics to generate profit to fight food insecurity in Western Australia. You can think about this in terms of the “best bang for your buck”. If you have $100 and you want to make the most impact with your money, we’d tell you to give it directly to a reputable charity like our Community Program Partners. But, if you have $100 and you need to buy a gift for someone, we’d encourage you to consider buying a Plenty meal gift. Not only is this gift a practice and thoughtful alternative to other gift delivery options on the market, the profits from your purchase will provide a warm meal and social connection for someone doing it tough when they visit one of our Community Program Partners.
We’re not asking for people to stop donating to charities and start donating to us. Charities literally exist on donations in order to keep serving in their community. So, keep donating and collect those tax-deductible receipts for tax time! What we are asking you to consider is, the next time someone you know needs a meal and you’re not able to make one and drop it off to them, please consider purchasing a Plenty meal gift for them. Your purchase will go a long way to not only helping out the person who receives your meal gift, your purchase will also provide a meal for someone in our local community experiencing food insecurity. Let’s feed two birds with one scone!
Our goal is to run our business as efficiently as possible so that we can direct as much profit as we can to our local Community Program Partners. In order to run our business successfully, we do need to pay staff and suppliers. If we didn’t do this, there’d be no business to run and no funds to distribute.
Plenty’s Board, made up of highly experienced and professional volunteers, oversees our annual budget, our profit and loss statements and our balance sheet. We also submit annual financial reports to the Australian Charities and Not-For-Profits Commission, which you can view here. This means that what we distribute to our Community Program Partners is 100% transparent. There are no fat bonuses, luxury watches or ‘work trips’ to the Maldives. We absolutely value our staff and suppliers, and pay them market rates to provide us with the excellent services that they do.
Happy staff and suppliers + happy customers = profits for our Community Program Partners.
Our purpose is to direct our profits to local organisations operating food relief programs and serving their local communities in Western Australia. We are currently partnering with Feed the Little Children Inc in Broome and The Haven Centre Inc in Victoria Park, Perth.
Feed the Little Children Inc.
Located in beautiful Broome, Western Australia, Feed the Little Children Inc have been delivering meals to children living below the poverty line since January 2012. They’ve delivered more than 32,000 meals to Broome kids and pregnant and nursing mothers, and run cooking classes to educate children about healthy eating and nutrition. FTLC are making a measurable impact in their community. The area has seen a significant reduction in hospitalisations for ear infection due to improved child nutrition, as well as an almost 50% reduction in young people charged with property offences on the nights that FTLC operate their meal delivery service. You can find out more about how Feed the Little Children Inc are successfully tackling child poverty in Broome by visiting their website and following them on Instagram @feedthelittlechildren.
The Haven Centre Inc
Nestled in the heart of Victoria Park’s bustling café strip, The Haven Centre Inc offers hot meals to those experiencing homelessness, the socially isolated or those who just need a helping hand. The Haven is a caring and safe place for people to visit for a warm meal and a chat with one of the friendly team of volunteers. Along with their meal service and food hampers, The Haven also offer laundry services, street health care services, hairdressing services and onsite shower facilities. You can find out more about The Haven Centre Inc and opportunities to join their volunteer team here.
While we love the idea of our customers engaging in a process of nominating where the profits from their purchase go, in reality, this can actually negatively impact our Community Program Partners. Not only would this impose an administrative burden on Plenty, which would impact our profitability, the food relief programs that our Community Program Partners operate are all equally worthy of our support. We’ve identified these organisations based on their valuable impact in their community and their service to some of the most vulnerable members of the community they’re operating in. And we’ve made a commitment to support their food relief programs, regardless of who might win a popularity contest at the checkout.
So, to answer your question, unfortunately you can’t choose where the profits from your purchase go — we hope you understand and can appreciate why.
We partner with local organisations that meet our funding criteria based on the impact of their food relief programs in the community and their approach to fighting food insecurity in Western Australia.
The reality is, many food relief programs are aligned with and founded upon a religious belief, and continue to be integral in the expression of that faith tradition. We don’t discriminate against a food relief program based on their religious position, but we do ensure that the food relief programs we fund don’t discriminate who they service on any grounds, including an individual’s religion or belief system.
At Plenty, we don’t believe in reinventing the wheel. The world doesn’t need more food relief programs, existing food relief programs need more support. We’ve chosen to partner with local and experienced organisations operating vital food relief programs in their local community. These organisations are best placed to identify the needs of the community. They’re working at the coalface of food insecurity in Western Australia and have been for some time. And too often their energies and efforts are directed away from their vital food relief service provision toward fundraising activities. We’re proud of the part we play in working to provide funding for our Community Program Partners – so that they can continue doing what they do best.
We’re a start-up that’s starting local. There are so many worthy food relief programs operating across the globe but we had to start somewhere, so we’ve partnered with local food relief programs run by grassroots organisations in Western Australia.
You might be surprised to know that more than one in eight adults and one in six children live below the poverty line in Australia, and that the poverty rate in Australia is worse than in most other developed countries.* While there is much need overseas, there’s also plenty of need here at home. We’re seeking to meet this need where it exists, and we’re starting in WA.
The good news is, as we grow, so will our impact. Our next step is to expand our meal gifting service into other Australian capital cities and to partner with local food relief organisations based in those States and Territories. But we’re not content to stop there either – our vision is that Plenty will one day have an impact on global food insecurity. But we have to start somewhere – from local beginnings.
*Davidson, Saunders, Bradbury and Wong, Poverty in Australia 2020 Report, Australian Council of Social Service
We have two Community Program Partners and they’re both based in WA. You can find out more about them here.
We’ve chosen to start local. We’ve launched our meal gifting service in Perth, Western Australia. So, we’re partnering with grassroots organisations that operate impactful food relief programs in WA.
But, we don’t want to stop here. Our next step is to expand our meal gifting service into other Australian capital cities so that more people can send and receive thoughtful and practical meal gifts, and more food relief programs can receive funding support from our profit-for purpose enterprise. As we grow, so will our impact.
We take our Community Program Partnerships very seriously. The organisations we partner with are aligned with our vision — to fight food insecurity and build hope, generosity and kindness in our community. Together we are building community, one bowl at a time.
Our Community Program Partners must meet our due diligence requirements, including the requirement that our Community Program Partners be registered with the Australian Charities and Not-For-Profits Commission. This means they’re subject to the same annual reporting and compliance requirements that we are, which can give our customers the confidence of knowing that their money is going to a registered charitable organisation.
Our Community Program Partners can demonstrate the measurable impact of their food relief programs in meeting the needs of their local community, as well as having good governance structures to ensure that they are run well and are sustainable going forward.
We have the greatest respect for the work that our Community Program Partners do and we’re honoured to be able to support them by providing them with the financial support they need to do what they do best.
Corporate
We’re so glad you asked. We’re currently in Phase 1 of our meal gifting service development. We’ve brought our meal gifts to market and are working hard to iron out any issues as they arise to build the best possible model to scale our impact.
Our online portal for corporate orders is part of our plan for Phase 2 (which includes a custom built Plenty website). We’d love to hear how we can best meet your corporate gifting needs. Please email us at corporate@plentygifting.com.au and provide us with your invaluable feedback to help us plan our corporate gifting service that can best serve you.
You can still make a corporate purchase on our current website by nominating your gift amount on our Gift a Meal page. If you’ve got any questions, please don’t hesitate to call 1300 588 052 and have a chat to Anushka and she can take you through the process.