In Greece, food communicates kindness and hospitality. Visitors will commonly hear Eláte na fáte mazí mas: "Come eat with us."
To garner that same spirit, as well as pay homage to her Greek roots, Nikandre Kopcke named her business after the phrase.
Mazí Mas is a London-based pop-up restaurant collectively run by women from migrant and refugee communities. These women, all mothers, have had difficulty finding work in the UK due to what some deem a lack of qualifications; nonetheless, they've developed extraordinary culinary skills from years of caring for their families. Kopcke wants to help bridge that gap.
"The idea is to bring to the public something I feel we don't get enough of, which is this amazing cooking you get in homes, but don't usually get a chance to try unless you're invited to someone's home for dinner," Kopcke, who acts as Mazí Mas' CEO, tells Mashable. "And at the same time, it's to create much-needed jobs for women who have no opportunities whatsoever."
The company connects with these women through partnering with several grassroots organizations in London. The current chefs of Mazí Mas come from all over the world, including Brazil, Iran, Ethiopia, Turkey, Senegal and Peru. Those who eat at the restaurant are able to taste authentic international cuisines, while benefitting the women behind them.
Mazí Mas from Waterbear Productions on Vimeo. Learn more about Waterbear here.
Six women currently work as part-time chefs with the social enterprise. Salaries vary depending on the hours each chef works, with an average of £710 per month. The restaurant is open for dinner five nights per week.
An additional four to five women participate in a weekly four-hour training program, which teaches them to adapt their skills to the commercial restaurant industry. This includes kitchen management and hygiene, building menus and setting budgets.
All of this helps to reduce these women's dependence on male partners, as well as their vulnerability to exploitation.
Kopcke has a background in gender studies, and also worked as a chef for years. The idea seemed a perfect way to combine her skills in a way that could help other women. But Mazí Mas is also a personal journey for her, inspired by the godmother who raised her in New York.
"She was in New York for almost 20 years, and wanted to open a bakery there. But she had a classically patriarchal Greek husband who said, 'Women don't go into business ... You're going to stay home and take care of children instead.' That is her great regret in life, and I sort of inherited it, because she means so much to me," Kopcke says.
Mazí Mas, then, is a way to ensure other women don't have that same regret, helping them to open the businesses of their dreams. Kopcke is interested in "reversing the obstacle that is motherhood."
"All over the world today, if you are a mother you are effectively punished because you interrupt your career and then you go back to it. If you're a privileged white woman, you're more able to progress and get your job back, but if you're not, you're kind of screwed. It's difficult to get past that," she says.
The chefs at Mazí Mas have all attended universities and had jobs in their home countries. But moving to the UK under difficult circumstances, often as refugees, has presented them as unqualified for the workforce.
But after working with the company, three chefs have already "graduated," securing jobs at commercial restaurants. One woman, who was born in Senegal and was very socially isolated after she arrived in the UK, recently left to be a commis chef in a central London restaurant. It's the first independent income she's ever had.
"Every time I go to [Mazí Mas], I get excited by the fact that I look in the kitchen and it's all women ... Restaurant kitchens tend to be such unwelcoming places for women, especially for black and minority ethnic women. You never see that," Kopcke says.
Packed restaurant! pic.twitter.com/drDBXUHRls— Mazí Mas (@eatmazimas) March 21, 2015
Originally, Mazí Mas was purely a pop-up model, setting up in places only for one to three days at a time. As you could imagine, it got chaotic, and it was tough to market an ever-moving restaurant to patrons. But now the team works mostly with arts organizations -- in theaters, specifically, which often have dormant or underutilized kitchen facilities.
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Right now, the company's main hub is at Ovalhouse Theatre in South London until May 30. On average, it gets between 40 and 50 diners per night; that number increases to 60 or 70 on weekends.
"Social media has been massive for our growth. We've had loads of people come into the restaurant and say, 'I heard about you on Twitter!' I've never believed in the magic of Twitter until very recently," Kopcke laughs.
After a recently successful crowdfunding campaign, the next step is to secure a permanent restaurant, hopefully within the next two years. In the more distant future, Kopcke hopes the model will be locally adaptable in other areas of the world, and locally responsive to the varying needs of those areas.
In fact, there's already a smaller sister organization, Mazí Mas Sydney, working exclusively with asylum seekers in Australia.
"Food is very powerful in terms of social change, because it has that ability to bring people together," Kopcke says. "It's something that transcends all barriers -- the universal language."