I'm posting this for the second time and no one is answering :(

Ayesha Khan has been an IT professional living and working in UAE since 2006. Being a cooking enthusiast, she needed a regular audience to test her cuisines while working as a full-time employee with Dubai's Government. The only readily available people were the cleaners and support staff of her office. She later found out that these employees who were having her meals had started to save a significant amount from their salaries and support their families by saving the money spent on their daily meals. She decided to continue providing meals to the support staff where she worked.

After spending more than ten years distributing meals to the support staff in her office, Ayesha decided to take this to the next level. She met several Government Authorities to know how she could transform this in-house activity into a full-fledged food center for the needy. That's when the authorities made it clear to her that she needs to have a "Business" of her own wherein the food would be prepared, inspected regularly by the Municipality, and then sold/distributed. To set up a Facility for cooking, packing & distribution, Ayesha needed funds. The only resource she managed was selling off her villa in 2018. The trade license was received post the facility setup in March 2019, and from then on, Food-ATM is a commercially registered enterprise located in Ajman, UAE.

Food-ATM earns regular income by providing daily three meals to blue-collar workers employed in corporate organizations in Dubai, Sharjah, and Ajman. She charges a minimum amount of AED 15 (3 pounds) to provide three daily meals (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner) per person. Under this contractual agreement, the corporate firms pay Food- ATM AED 15 for these meals. The benefits for the corporate firms are that they meet CSR obligations while also ensuring their workers' well-being. Some corporate firms pay for their worker's food, and Food-ATM's low price saves them money.

A percentage of its profits are devoted to Food-ATM's own CSR activities. The company distributes approximately 100 free meals to several labor camps and construction sites in Dubai, Sharjah, and Ajman. Food-ATM has received an Award for best practices under the Ajman Chamber of Commerce's social responsibilities category.

Ayesha says, "The Joy of Giving food to the needy can only be felt by the giver and seen in the receiver's eyes; this Joy cannot be stated most accurately in words. During the Corona pandemic, we were faced with challenges of financial survival but with several heartfelt good wishes and prayers from all those we supported, which has helped us sustain and grow further".

Food-ATM cooks, packs, and delivers daily meals every day, which makes its operations quite complicated. The company has to ensure that inventories are in regular supply; cooking maintains the quality standards, and delivery is on time. The business operations involve up to 650 to 700 food parcels for distributions each day. The company has to ensure that food parcels reach the right workers. Food-ATM has, therefore, used technology to streamline operations. It uses Smart Cards loaded with meal counts for each worker (counts are loaded at the beginning of every month), and these Smart Cards are swiped using the conventional card reader machines during each meal dispensing.

Food-ATM has procured hot-food vending machines that are already developed and currently in India, to be transported to the UAE soon. The devices will replace conventional card reader machines. The process will become more cost-effective as it will reduce human labor in distribution and manual card swiping. Each vending machine costs the company, AED 37500 and Food-ATM, plans to install 12 such vending machines at various client locations in 2020.

Ayesha understands that food preparation and distribution are time-critical processes, and delivering freshly cooked meals three times a day to many people at different locations can become a nightmare if not planned properly. It requires careful planning of activities and calculating each activity's duration so that all events, primarily those critical to the process's length, are determined in the planning stage. The operation is running successfully at a smaller level, but Food- ATM's plans to expand to other cities in the UAE will put additional pressure on its activities.

"Now, our mission is to serve more people with daily free meals to support their families and provide education to their children, says Ayesha. Food-ATM is not only a business for me but also an integral part of my life that I always want to live until I exist."

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