FareShare

With over 30 warehouses redistributing surplus food to charities and community groups. We work with over 500 food businesses to take excess food that can’t be sold and redistribute it through a network of 9,500 front line organisations across every constituency in the UK. Recipients include homeless hostels, school breakfast clubs, domestic violence refuges, older people’s lunch clubs, food banks and hospices.

Website: fareshare.org.uk/ Contact: [email protected] / 0207 394 2468

Impact in numbers (as at September 2022)

• Over the last 12 months, we redistributed 54,000 tonnes of food.

• Provided the equivalent of 2.5 million meals per week and 129 million meals in the last financial year for people who might not otherwise eat.

• Since April 2020, supplied the equivalent of over 131.9 million meals to people across the UK.

Industry partners

We work with organisations across the food industry – including retailers, manufacturers, global producers and UK farmers and suppliers – to identify where surplus occurs in the supply chain and provide a social and environmental solution to minimising food waste. We want to make it as easy as possible for them to provide good quality surplus food to us and feed people in need.

What we do with the food

Where good-to-eat food is going to waste, we work with haulage and logistics partners to collect or deliver to one of our 31 warehouses. Here, staff and volunteers pick it, pack it and divert it to local frontline organisations across the UK.

Operations

Whether part-pallets or lorry loads, own label or branded, we transport surplus food that is safe to eat, operating to the same standards as the rest of the food industry. From labelling and packaging errors, to overproduction, discontinued lines and product samples, we accept a wide range of products, including ambient, beverages, chilled, cooking ingredients, dairy, fresh, frozen, meat, and wonky fruit and veg.

Wider network

We work with a wide range of partners, other charities and community support providers. We also work with frontline organisations for fundraising and volunteering, including British Red Cross, Comic Relief and on initiatives such as the Tesco Food Collection.

Key programmes

We’re more than just food. We work with an array of organisations to support both the food industry and local communities. This includes regional and national Workplace and Employability programmes to support people into work, and the Surplus with Purpose Fund, which provides support and funding to food organisations to access hard-to-reach surplus food.

Testimonial

“Many of the people we provide food to struggle with finding good, healthy options to feed their families. So we love the variety of fresh fruit and vegetables available through FareShare. Many of the families aren’t too confident in the kitchen — they’ll often favour things like the simple pasta and sauce options that we have available. It’s a luxury for those who aren’t so well off to be able to get food like that, which they might not consider when walking round the supermarket.”

“We like to encourage the exploration of fresh foods too. That’s why we started using some of the produce to do Let’s Get Cooking classes in the centre, to teach them how to take a few simple ingredients and make nutritious meals for the whole family quickly and easily.”

Louise Stansfield, Priory Children’s Centre Locality Coordinator, Hull & Humber