The Story
Well Kneaded is a social enterprise, founded in 2011, out of Wendy, the vintage Citroen-turned pizza van. Headed up by husband and wife team Laurence and Bridget, the heart of Well Kneaded, inspired by the biblical principles of jubilee- centres on justice, sustainability and compassion. It is summarised in the founding value that everyone, regardless of background or history is (well) needed. WK beautifully combines the desire to create the best sustainable sourdough pizza with a mission to offer a pathway to independence for young adults who have faced barriers. This is no ordinary business.
From street food markets with Kerb, to private parties for the rich and famous, Wendy the Wagon (sketch on left) saw it all, but she had her limits. Wanting to increase our impact, we raised investment -through putting a sign on the side of Wendy during a festival!- and opened the Earlsfield pizzeria in December 2018. All the while we were building relationships with amazing growers, makers, community partners, local young adults and amazing friends and supporters who all kept us sane and encouraged us to keep going.
After some great press and awards; 'Women in Food', 2019 & Entrepreneur of the year at the Wandsworth Women's Enterprise Awards in 2022, not to mention 'best (pizza) pie' at the street food awards), the pandemic forced us to looking long and hard at our 'Why'. We opened, and closed two sites in third party venues within a year. Despite being able to offer employment and training opportunities to young adults, with the changing economic climate and our growing desire for impact on this side of our work, something needed to change.
After a healthy bit of soul searching, we decided to open a charity to increase our capacity to deliver the training needed to support more young adults into employment and independence. In 2023 WK Foundation was registered with the charities commission, and we begun a Theory of Change process, scrutinising everything we had done so far. In September 2024 we launched Nourish- a holistic hospitality training programme. Nourish now runs 2 cohorts every year with 10 trainees. In that time we have expanded our scope with food as well! Our events offering now includes loaded focaccia sandwiches and gourmet pasta bowls... as well as a cheeky sandwich brand launching in Earlsfield.
At Well Kneaded we make great food, to enable great people to be employed, for a greater planet. Big claims? Let us explain.
Great food means that not only does our pizza and all of our food, taste great, but it is created with ingredients that are carefully- sustainably- sourced. That means organic ingredients from smaller farms,
building relationships with suppliers, and an exciting and tasty menu of pizza, sides, salads and desserts. It means making more and more of our food from scratch. In 2020, we bought a mill, and so our pizza dough now includes house milled ancient grains.
We believe in partnering with suppliers that are doing the hard work to grow well and grow sustainably and restoratively. Paradise Cooperative in Wandsworth & Sutton Community Farm provide a lot of our veg and are located just a stones throw from our pizzeria in Earlsfield. Tempus Foods supplies the majority of our meat and we use a mix of flours/grains from Duchess Farm, Shipton Mill & Scotland the Bread
to name a few.
The final component of ‘great food’ is that it is served in a way that is warm, welcoming and intuitive so that anyone who comes into contact with us is left feeling a little bit greater than when they arrived.
It can’t end with great food and food service though.
Our mission is to give confidence, through employment, to young people who feel they have been a little (or a lot) overlooked. Our hope is that by working with us, these young people are sustained and see a bit more of their greatness. The dream is that they begin to share our vision for a sustainable planet with their family and friends and so the love and care for our planet through great food spreads through local inner-city communities- this is the legacy we want to leave.
When people realise their greatness, they have a greater capacity to make other things great.
Our team are an extension of our family, and anyone who has ever worked at Well Kneaded is considered as such. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see some of the pizza loving hero's that are part of Team Kneaded.
For us innovation and sustainability come hand in hand. We are pumped to be making food in a way that supports and not scuppers the planet and that tastes and looks great. However, we recognise that to be sustainable, we need to innovate, through creativity, and take the longer way most times.
If we can make it from scratch, from ingredients in their whole form- we will. We want to excite more people about that. We take time and effort to track down high welfare, low intervention, local producers and suppliers, but where someone isn’t doing it really well, we might just start to do it ourselves.
Here are some ways we are putting the planet first:
0% waste to landfill
100% organic cotton uniforms
We are powered by green energy (Ecotricity)
No nasty chemicals
Over two thirds of our menu is sourced with the intention of repairing broken food systems. Of this, at least 50% is farmed/grown/produced with truly regenerative, radically sustainable methods by people we know.
