Monday mornings start earlier than most for The Loop Kitchen founder Veronica Robin.
At 3am, she is up at her Barrack Heights home getting ready for what will become an almost 18-hour working day.
From there it’s into a commercial kitchen in Warilla, where she cooks the week’s orders in one hit – currently around 50 to 60 meals.
Everything has to be cooked, cooled and packed before she leaves the kitchen at about 2.30pm. Then come deliveries across Shellharbour and Lake Illawarra, followed by customers collecting meals from her home between 5pm and 7pm.
The final admin is usually wrapped up around 8pm or 8.30pm.
Then it’s bed.
“Yeah, Mondays are a big day,” Veronica said.
Even more so because The Loop Kitchen isn’t her only job. Veronica is currently working three others while trying to build the business to the point where it can become her main source of income.
“I really would like to be able to grow Loop Kitchen, so I can let go of a few other jobs, because that’s where my passion lies,” she said.
That passion isn’t just for cooking.
At the heart of The Loop Kitchen is an attempt to tackle one of the less visible by-products of the booming ready-made meal and takeaway industries: the packaging left behind after the food has been eaten.
There are no disposable takeaway containers at The Loop Kitchen.
Instead, meals arrive in reusable containers that customers return. They are commercially washed and sanitised, then filled again for another customer.
New customers pay a one-off, refundable $30 deposit. They generally have three weeks to return the containers, either swapping them with their next order or returning them through one of The Loop Kitchen’s collection arrangements.
It’s a system that relies on customers actually bringing the packaging back.
So far, they have.
Veronica started the business with 180 containers. After its first year, she had lost just one.
“People are excited to give me back their containers,” she said.
“I think there’s a lot of fear of forgetting … and I’m always just happy to see them.”
The model took about two-and-a-half years to develop before Veronica was ready to launch.
Originally from Canada, she had moved to Australia in 2019 after leaving a career in social work, initially intending to travel, learn to surf and work out what came next.
COVID intervened; she stayed, met her partner and eventually settled in Shellharbour.
But the origins of The Loop Kitchen go back much further.
Food had always been a big part of family life growing up, and after leaving home at 16, Veronica taught herself to cook rather than rely on frozen or takeaway meals.
Her interest in waste started even earlier.
She still remembers sitting in primary school at nine years old, listening to someone explain how long disposable nappies took to break down.
She began thinking about her own nappies, then those of her classmates, then those of an entire town.
“I remember feeling that sinking feeling when I was nine,” she said.
As an adult, that translated into progressively removing single-use plastics from her own life.
She started with relatively simple changes – avoiding packaged onions and cucumbers, making sauces and dressings rather than buying them packaged – and gradually worked towards buying almost no packaged food.
“I don’t like saying zero because sometimes, like, accidents happen and it comes into your house … but I do not buy anything that’s packaged.”
As a first-time business owner Veronica spent more than two years working through how a reusable meal-delivery system could operate while meeting food hygiene requirements.
It also meant explaining the concept to customers who were familiar with reusable coffee cups, but less accustomed to having their dinner arrive in packaging someone else had previously used.
Veronica likens it to eating at a restaurant.
“When you’re using a plate at a restaurant, it has been reused,” she said.
“Everything’s sanitised between users.”
Interest has been there, although turning curiosity into customers has taken time.
Her original business plan was based on producing around 60 meals a week. For much of the first year, the reality was closer to 20.
Now The Loop Kitchen is regularly hitting between 50 and 60 meals a week.
The business currently delivers across Shellharbour, Albion Park, Dapto, Windang, Lake Heights and surrounding areas, with collection arrangements at The Source Shellharbour also helping extend its reach.
And Veronica is already looking north.
She said she regularly received enquiries from Wollongong and the northern suburbs, but needs to find the right collection point before expanding.
Ideally, that would be a Wollongong business with refrigeration, good access and somewhere customers could easily stop to collect their meals.
“I’ve been looking for a drop-off point for quite a while to make it work,” she said.
“I would love to make it there because … there’s a pool of people that would be interested.”
There are other pieces to put in place too.
Veronica currently rents a commercial kitchen from Southern Youth and Family Services in Warilla and has been searching for a space that would give her greater flexibility.
She is also reaching the point where another pair of hands in the kitchen would help increase production.
But her longer-term plans for The Loop Kitchen are bigger than expanding a meal-delivery run.
Veronica wants to use what she is learning to develop a reusable packaging system that other cafes, restaurants and hospitality businesses could adopt.
She believes there is a gap between businesses wanting to reduce disposable packaging and knowing how to make a reusable system work in practice.
“I really, really would like to build a system that is proven to work and then be able to help out people to implement it,” she said.
For the moment, the proof of concept is happening much closer to home: out of a rented Warilla kitchen, across Shellharbour and Lake Illawarra – and starting every Monday at 3am.