Hey hey hey
I’m Avni and I’m the Founder of Virtuelicious. I want to welcome you to a world of quick cooking.
I originally set up Virtuelicious to raise awareness about food and packaging waste. I wanted to prove that there is another way. So I use compostable packaging and offer portion sized recipe blends…so there is no food or packaging waste.
But that’s not all, I wanted to make cooking easy. I come from a corporate background where I worked ridiculously long hours and found it hard to cook after a long day at work. It was imperative to me that whatever I produced would enable people that found them in a similar situation to eat homemade food. So with my kits you can do the prep for a meal in ten minutes plus cooking time.
As well as the recipe blends, I also help people to overcome their cooking hurdles through coaching. I’m finding it extremely rewarding to see the transformation…the excitement on people’s faces when they send me pictures of meals they have made but never thought they would be able to!
So that’s me…a home cook wanting to help everyone to experience the joy of home cooking.
Quick cook kits – fast wholesome food at your fingertips
My meal kits give you the freedom to eat your food your way – add your own fresh ingredients to our little packages of flavour to create delicious meals you can feel virtuous about.
- only ten minutes of your time to prepare the meal then let your cooker to the hard work
- I’ll send you the base flavours and you add the fresh ingredients according to your diet, budget and lifestyle
- I only use ingredients found in a well stocked kitchen
- no oil so you are in control of the fat content
- non perishable so you can eat them when you want…as one customer said, “It’s better than a Pot Noodle!”
- zero waste – portion sized kits and compostable packaging so no food or packaging waste
- I keep the carbon footprint down by not adding oil and water which would increase the volume and weight of our meal kits and therefore unnecessarily increase fuel consumption in transportation and packaging. It also means there is no rush to use them before they go off so you can keep our meal kits in the cupboard until you want to use them
Why I Started Virtuelicious
I’ve always hated waste – wasted food, resources, time, effort…life would be much simpler without waste. The reason for starting this business was because I lived in a flat with limited kitchen cupboard space. When I moved I the opportunity to clear my cupboards of outdated food taking up valuable space. There was stuff in there that was over 10 years old! Seriously! I’d hung on to it for all those years thinking I’d would get around to using it one day, but that day never came. So in the bin it all went…food and packaging. Heartbreaking! Sound familiar? That’s why I decided that something had to change. So I set up Virtuelicious to provide meal kits in portion sizes so you don’t have to buy a whole packet of Allspice (and so many other ingredients) for one recipe like I did! I really hope you enjoy making the meals using our meal kits and would love to know what you think. Happy eating x
My Criteria for my Recipe Blends
We got thinking about what we really needed from our food and here’s the list:
- tasty: this is the number one requirement, we love food and it has to taste good or we’re just not satisfied
- healthy: it’s hard to make good health choices at the right price. We want nutritious food that fits with a healthy diet
- good value: We don’t want to spend a fortune on food
- natural: We like home cooked food because we know what goes into it
- zero-waste: We hate waste! Really, we do! That’s packaging waste, food waste, space, transport, the lot
- quick: ten minute prep time – who has time to be a domestic god(dess) anyway?
- flexibility: We want you to be able to make food with your own signature on it
- fairness to all: We wanted to create an environment where everyone gets a good deal, that’s the suppliers, the team, the distributors and the customers
My Vision
Do you remember a time when the milkman delivered milk in bottles which you rinsed and left out for him to collect and reuse once you were done with them? I do! Whatever happened to valuing the resource we have available to us, about respecting it and preserving what we have? It seems that now everything we buy is packaged in some form or other, sometimes triple packed, and we rarely give a thought to the necessity of the packaging. There have been steps taken to reduce packaging – the carrier bag charge goes some way towards it but nowhere near enough. Recycling initiatives are progress but recycling still consumes energy and resources. Best to not use it in the first place. I look forward to a time when we stop this mindless fixation on consumption, I dream of a day when we can take our own containers to the shop and decant our food and drinks…can you imagine decanting milk into your own bottle, buying chocolate by the gram and having no packaging to throw away? Please let your imagination free and help us to achieve a less wasteful future. Dare to dream.
My Values
Virtuelicious is values driven. I am proud to uphold our values and invite others to do the same
My values are based on my name: A Very Nice Idea i.e. Avni
A – Assiduously adhering to my values and mission. All significant decisions are made with reference to my values.
Very (going the extra mile): I try to go the extra mile in everything I do. My passion is evident in my commitment to forge ahead with my vision to combat food and packaging waste.
Nice (doing the right thing): It’s all about doing the right thing – by my customers, suppliers, team, people and of course, the planet! I realise that our actions have a wide impact…so we must be nice!!!!
Idea (challenging the status quo): Doing things a certain way just because everyone else is doing it is not good enough. I do what I do in the way I do it because I truly believe it is the best option.