Blog. The Antonio Carluccio Foundation gifts £25,000 to HA.

In a week which marks the fifth anniversary of our first COVID grant we also reported that 2024 was our most challenging year yet. A surge in grant applications last year was driven by mounting debt, soaring living costs, unstable work patterns and declining mental health. Reflecting the deepening crisis faced by thousands of hospitality workers across the UK, we provided financial and emotional support to more hospitality households facing hardship than ever before.

We receive no government funding and can only do so much thanks to the amazing generosity of the industry we serve. We are incredibly grateful to The Antonio Carluccio Foundation, which recently gifted Hospitality Action £25,000. We caught up with The Foundation's Chief Executive, Simon Kossoff, to learn a little more.

Can you share a little about the foundation’s mission and the legacy of Antonio Carluccio?

Antonio established his foundation before he passed away in late 2017. A charity in his name to carry forward his legacy. The Foundation aims specifically to provide the resources, training and development needed by young otherwise disadvantaged cooks and chefs entering our industry and to support the work of charities and non-governmental organisations in alleviating poverty and hunger in Italy and The United Kingdom.

How does the foundation decide which causes and charities to support?

We are really a tiny organisation. Just three trustees: his partner, his colleague and his business manager. We pride ourselves on having almost no costs and being able to focus the entirety of the financial legacy Antonio left us on the organisations he would have wanted to support. Working directly from Antonio’s guidance we have developed a number of criteria that lead our discussions and always ask, what would he have said?

How do you see the foundation’s contribution to Hospitality Action making a tangible difference in the lives of hospitality workers?

Hospitality can be a tough and transitory world for the people in it. As regular supporters we hope our grants go some way to catching the hospitality folks who fall through the net and need a little more help to make their way. If our contribution helps hospitality people to get back from difficulties and get going again in our industry we would be delighted.

The industry has faced immense challenges in recent years - what do you think Antonio would make of the challenges hospitality workers face today?

Antonio wasn’t first and foremost a business man but he could always see and understand the problems in our industry. He would have been sad to see the difficulties and challenges faced now by our hospitality workers and happy to campaign, quietly as always, for a better environment.

What do you think would make Antonio proudest about the foundation’s work today?

We often aid our discussions by asking ourselves what Antonio would think or what he might have done. I suspect he would be proudest of the work we have done in Sicily with Dan McCubbins community kitchen and the other small organisations who focus on developing young people into our industry. He was also a great supporter of the work done by The Clink, proud to be an ambassador for them and I’m certain he would be happy we have continued his work. His guidance didn’t help us when the pandemic came but I know he would be delighted that because of his legacy we were able to make available over half a million pounds to a variety of small and local organisations including Hospitality Action helping to support those in terrible need during 2020 and 2021.