ACTON, MASS. (WHDH) - A local chef is making lemonade out of lemons after he was laid off at the start of the pandemic.
When the pandemic hit back in March and Gavin Lambert lost his job at a Boston restaurant, he could never have imagined his plate would be this full.
“For about a week I was just moping around the house being sad,” he said. “Thinking, ‘Oh my God, what am I gonna do? I don’t have a job.'”
While so many people in his position have struggled to find work, Lambert and his wife Rachel Amiralian-Lambert cooked up their own solution.
“We started preparing dinners for friends and families out of our home kitchen,” Lambert said.
From their home in West Concord — WECO for short — their business was born.
“It was just like, ‘Let’s do this,” Amiralian-Lambert said. “It felt like a way to spread some joy in dark times and provide people with really awesome, delicious food at a very reasonable price, keep us busy, help us pay our rent.”
Lambert’s chef-prepared food delivery and take-out service is built on locally grown fruits and vegetables. They take that foundation and build gourmet meals around them five days a week.
No repeats.
“I think week one 20 meals a day, by week two, 60 a day and by week three it was a hundred,” Amiralian-Lambert said.
The success has allowed them to hire 25 employees from chefs to delivery drivers. Now, they’re gearing up for their company’s first Thanksgiving by preparing soups, salads, sides, and sauces. Basically, everything but the turkey.
“It very quickly transformed from a hobby project to something everybody and their mother wanted,” Lambert said.
The business operates out of two kitchens, one in Acton and another in Somerville. They are looking to expand to a third location.
WECO makes deliveries in the Metro West area and also does take-out.
Interested in trying it out? Click here.
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