Meet ‘The Deaf Chefs,’ two sisters who have set up their very own food truck!

My name is Coco Briden and my sister is Mandy Docker. I am based in East London. The Deaf Chefs is a new business venture of ours – a food truck that caters for all kind of events.

Initially Mandy and I wanted to create something that is accessible for the deaf community but also for the wider community to learn the basics of BSL and to enjoy the delicious food served. In future we would like to employ young deaf adults and give apprenticeships schemes and to work in a deaf environment that is deaf led.

To explain a bit more about us, Mandy is profoundly deaf and I am hard of hearing. We come from a deaf family of three generations and so we all use BSL. So far, we have catered for the deaf community mostly so there have been no language barriers at all.

It’s a lovely experience and so heartwarming to see deaf people order food with smooth communication. When working with hearing customers, I am able to manage with the level of hearing I have, so we have had no complications in that respect but we do have struggles with the paper side of the business. English isn’t our first language so we do face challenges. Eventually we will need an interpreter to help us with the struggles we face.

In the future we would like to create a menu with hand-shapes of the BSL alphabet or numbers so customers can pinpoint what they would like to order by signing the numbers or letters. So not only would the hearing community get the chance to eat lovely food but they would also learn BSL at the same time!

Thinking about what inspired us food wise, looking back Mandy and I were obsessed with Ready, Steady, Cook when we were growing up. Our mum would come home from shopping and we would empty the bags reacting how the show does and pretend we were making dishes.

I always liked watching cooking programmes and would learn from visual shows. Our parents, growing up weren’t the most fantastic cooks so I would always try new recipes growing up.

I like dirty street food; good gyros wraps or something that has a delicious sauce to top the dish. Our family are big BBQ lovers too so anything that is cooked on coal is my favourite. Recently I have been playing with canapés, such a fiddle to make but so appealing to the eye. I also like to bake on my days off as I find it really relaxing.

Mandy has the necessary certificates and NVQ in food and actually works as a full-time chef at The Cosy Club in her local area. I’ve also worked in a few cafes and restaurants over the years too. We both are really self taught.

So far we have been really lucky with our journey. We have done all of this by ourselves with the help of our families. We haven’t had any business grants or asked for support because we really struggle with the paper work side of things, e.g business plan, tax and all the daunting stuff.

I always wanted a own my own cafe but Mandy and I knew that it would take a lot of money and hard work. Mandy then came up with the idea of a food truck. During lockdown I randomly just bought a caravan and the rest is history!

We always include a variety of food on our menus for the meat lovers, veggies and vegans. There is always at least one vegan option on the menu. Also, whatever is requested we are cater to the customers needs.

Between the two of us we work well. Mandy is the calm one, she controls the kitchen and keeps the pace flowing. I do all the boring stuff, working with clients, paperwork, creating menus, stock checks etc. I would say I am the bossy one and control everything but Mandy keeps in me line and helps me to keep the ship sailing.

We have worked at a lot of pop-up events from my home, people would come to our place and have a take away, or sit and eat in the garden. It was a wonderful thing; it was like a deaf club and growing up we were always at the deaf club so it brought back a lovely feeling for us.

Since then, we have done some Zoom events for NDCS. We have catered for weddings and also a fundraising event for England deaf futsal as well as the Deaf sports jubilee and Heathlands summer fete.

Our most recent event was for Love Language in partnership with Barclays bank, our biggest one to date. We are so proud on how far we have come and we look forward to many more food events coming our way.

You can find The Deaf Chefs, Coco and Mandy at Hoe Street market in Walhamstow on Saturday 12th November where they are offering a Greek inspired menu, full of souvlaki wraps! They will be back there again on Saturday 10^th December providing a Christmas special – Yorkshire pudding wraps!

To follow them on social media see:
Instagram – thedeafchefs
Facebook – thedeafchefsldn

To donate to their Go Fund Me page to complete their food truck go to:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-deaf-chefs-to-complete-their-food-truck-dream?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cf+share-flow-1