Zambrero


Zambrero is an Australian restaurant chain serving Mexican food. It was founded by then-medical student Sam Prince with the idea of using the profits to support humanitarian causes. The chain donates a meal to someone in need in the developing world for every meal purchased through their Plate4Plate programme.

History

It opened its first store in the Canberra suburb of Braddon in 2005. Zambrero later expanded nationally, and then internationally. In 2016 opened its first European restaurant in Ireland. Zambrero opened its first restaurant in New Zealand in November 2014, in Ireland in March 2016 and opened its first two restaurants in the United States of America on 20 March 2018. As of October 2019, Zambrero has over 200 restaurants worldwide.

Philanthropy

In conjunction with partner organisation Rise Against Hunger, they have donated almost 8,000,000 meals. The company had shifted from an earlier goal of supplying educational resources to indigenous communities and developing countries, for which Prince had founded the E-magine Foundation in 2007, to reducing global hunger, with CEO Stuart Cook stating "we decided to focus on the basic human rights … you aren’t gonna get to school if you’re hungry". In April 2015 it was reported that they had given 4.3 million meals in the previous eighteen months. Prince was named the Australian of the Year for the ACT in 2012 for his Zambrero's-funded philanthropy.

Nutrition

A 2016 study by the George Institute for Global Health, analysing 229 small meals and snacks from 25 fast food chains, found Zambrero's pork nachos to have the highest kilojoule count.