Community Shop

Community Shop is an award-winning social enterprise that builds stronger individuals and more confident communities. We provide our members with vital access to deeply discounted food, as well as life-changing learning and development programmes.

Website: companyshopgroup.co.uk/communityshop Contact: [email protected] / 01226 747 121

Impact in numbers (in 2021)

• Community Shop members collectively saved more than £7.5m on their shopping bills by buying deeply discounted products.

• More than 20,000 households were supported by Community Shop.

• Over 8,000 members accessed activities and sessions through the Community Hub.

• 99% of Community Shop members said that their ‘sense of community’ had improved since joining.

Industry partners

Aldi /Asda / Co-op / Iceland / Lidl / M&S / Ocado / Morrisons / Sainsbury’s / Tesco / Wilko

Arla / Bakkavor / Danone / Greencore / Mondelez / Nestle / Premier Foods / Samworth Brothers / Unilever

What we do with the food

Community Shop is a network of 10 social supermarkets based within some of the most deprived areas of the UK. These are built around three connected spaces which together combine to help our members becomes the very best versions of themselves.

The first of these is our Community Stores, which provide our members with vital access to deeply discounted food. The revenue raised here is invested back into the local area through our Community Hubs, which provides life-changing learning and development programmes, as well as our Community Kitchen where people can come together for a healthy meal and where children eat for free all year round.

Operations

Community Shop is part of Company Shop Group, which redistributes thousands of tonnes of perfectly good surplus food and household products each year (which otherwise may have gone to waste) by working with some of the UK’s biggest retailers, manufacturers and brands.

Company Shop Group offers a unique Donation Activation model, which sees large surplus quantities donated through its surplus supermarket, Company Shop, with the value from these sales reinvested into Community Shop.

Wider network

Community Shop is part of Company Shop Group, the UK’s leading redistributor of surplus food and household products.

Key programmes

Community Shop’s Healthy Holidays programme brings together partners from across the UK to deliver hundreds of interactive sessions for school children who are at risk of hardships felt through holiday hunger. The programme includes cooking, exercise, physical activity, health and wellbeing, mental health, and nutrition, and creates a health and wellbeing foundation that children can build on.

Connecting Careers helps people make informed decisions about their future career prospects and the skills and qualifications they need to get back into the workplace. The programme supports those looking to explore new career paths or enhance their skills through education, work experience and volunteering.

Testimonial

Last year, Community Shop was honoured with a prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the Promoting Opportunity category, which was in recognition of its immense impact helping to change lives and empower communities for the benefit of generations to come.

It was also awarded with the SEUK, Prove It: Social Impact Award for the scale of impact and change within local communities, as well as helping people back into work and education.

Gary Stott, Executive Chairman of Community Shop, said: “Community Shop is a social enterprise that exists to offer communities a hand up, not a handout.”

“The foundation to this is having access to fresh, wholesome food which is affordable and readily accessible, as well as having longer term plans in place to deliver real change within the communities we support through our learning and development programmes. All this is possible thanks to our amazing partners and the surplus stock donations that we receive.”