Mercato Metropolitano crowns winning ‘dreaMMer’

Mercato Metropolitano (MM) has announced the first trading partner that will be setting up shop at its brand-new Ilford sustainable community food market – and will be completely free of charge for the first three months.

Arjun Manikandan, aged 26 from Ilford, has been crowned the first official ‘dreaMMer’ and winner of the dreaMM initiative. Inspired by the vibrant culinary culture of Kerala, India, The Malayali Project aims to bring the diverse and delicious flavours of authentic Keralan cuisine to Mercato Metropolitano.

As part of the prize, MM will also be providing Manikandan and his team with access to free one-to-one consultations to help create a successful and long-lasting business plan, support in sourcing sustainable, local ingredients, branding and marketing advice, and more.

Manikandan said: “It was a surreal moment finding out that we won the dreaMM campaign. Having never run a business before, we don’t know what to expect, but we know that the MM team will be supporting us all the way and that gives me confidence to say, ‘Okay, let’s do this!”

Andrea Rasca, chiex executive officer of MM, added: “Our panellists, including myself, were blown away by Arjun’s passion to bring authentic Kerala cuisine to our markets and, after achieving a perfect score, we knew we had to name him our winner. We can’t wait to see what he cooks up in our new sustainable community market in Ilford when it opens.”

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