At Virtuoso Foods we pride ourselves on creating delicious foods, cakes and treats all made from plants!
Our ethos is to cook only with plant-based ingredients (better for our environment, planet and animals) getting creative and tantalising your taste buds with exotic, world and local flavours to make our dishes stand out from the rest.
My journey started back in 2013 when I opened my cafe (Cafe Virtuoso) in Bedford and had a fun (yet exhausting) 3 years growing, learning and establishing ourselves from a Vegetarian cafe to becoming 100% plant-based. Veganism was not incredibly popular at the time therefore, with great sadness, I closed the doors in 2017.
However every silver lining.............I took my business online and day by day, I grew from strength to strength, building the business from a static Cafe to a more mobile business, offering our services for Private Catering (weddings, private functions, yoga & business retreats and events) as well as hosting regular Cooking Workshops locally and in London.
Because I became more mobile after letting go of the Cafe, I was able to travel more and having family in Los Angeles, USA, I started to provide my services there as well as back in my home town of Bedford and London and everywhere in between.
With private catering, you end up travelling a lot whether in the UK, Europe or US and this is one aspect I thoroughly enjoy. Not only am I travelling for business, to grow my business and offer my services to new (and returning) clients, I am learning so much about different methods people use to cook their dishes, new ingredients using alternative herbs and spices as well as different ideas and processes to help grow and promote my business.
At Virtuoso Foods I pride myself in being able to provide a friendly service, very down to earth and work well with my clients and suppliers to build solid relationships.
Whilst working with 100% plant-based ingredients, I also provide foods that cater to many alternative regimes such as Gluten Free, Raw Foods, Macrobiotics as well as Jayne & Fodmap (promoting no onion, no garlic).
I started my ‘vegetarian’ journey back in 2008 when my health took a turn for the worse and I started re-educating myself on health and nutrition. Coming from an IT background and travelling around Europe for the last 5 years of my time working for a telecoms company, I noticed my health suffering and my weight piling on, making me feel uncomfortable, both physically as well as health wise. I left my telecoms job and hit the recession of 2008 which gave me the opportunity to take some time out to re-assess my life which in turn ended up with me becoming an NLP Practitioner, taking control of my own life (and mind) and studying more about nutrition as well as having the chance to cook and experiment with more home cooked and nutritional meals.
Between 2013-2017 I opened and ran Cafe Virtuoso, learning more about food and after meeting a vegan nutritionist in 2014, both myself and my cafe become 100% plant-based. Over the next few years, I learnt more about my body, more about food and the impact it has on body and mind, and knew the importance of taking action for myself as well as sharing the knowledge I had gained with my customers and hence now, offering all things plant-based.
My weight has stabilised over the years and although I am not at my ideal weight, I am working on this and know that I am at the best health I have ever been, no longer suffering with high blood pressure or high cholesterol (I used to be on high dosage of medication for both but no longer) and classed as diabetic in 2014 however my blood sugars have been normal now for coming up to 2 years and I truly have my diet, knowledge & understanding to thank for this.
I am a one person business however have a great network of family & friends that I can tap into to support me when I need and a group of reliable team members who I rely on when we are out and about, on the road, doing what we do best at private catering functions and events. This community is always at the heart of everything I do and I am very hands on in my business, managing my social media, website, blogging and newsletters with a little help for my part-time admin assistant Suzy.
To be amongst the first to see all of our new developments and to take advantage of some of our early bird promotions with future classes, workshops and events, please visit our website, www.virtuosofoods.com and fill out the contact us form on the home page.
I look forward to seeing you soon, where ever in the world you may be and thank you in advance for your continued support in our small yet growing and loving business.
