People Planet Pasta
16 June 2023RaviOllie is a Bristol-based company with preventing food waste at its heart.
RaviOllie is a Bristol-based company founded by Ollie Greenhalgh, that make and deliver gourmet, homemade ravioli to individual customers as well as restaurants, hotels and other wholesale outlets. As chefs and passionate food waste preventers they decided to tackle food waste firsthand, by taking on as much surplus food as they could and creating ravioli to donate to Fareshare South West.
Passionate food waste preventers
During the Covid-19 pandemic, RaviOllie suppliers indicated that significant amounts of surplus ingredients were destined for the bin due to the closure of hospitality establishments. As a result, they launched a new initiative called Planet. People. Pasta.
Sustainability at the core
Sustainability is at the core of RaviOllie. They worked with FareShare South West to produce a ravioli recipe that could be filled with whatever surplus vegetables were available and any number of ingredients. This ravioli is then stored and redistributed to charities and community groups working with people facing food insecurity.
During the autumn period, particularly after Halloween, there are often more surplus pumpkins than the FareShare network can redistribute from suppliers, retailers and farmers’ fields. In November 2022, RaviOllie took 60kg of surplus pumpkins (approx. 80-120 pumpkins) from FareShare South West and tuned them into 600 portions of delicious fresh pumpkin ravioli. Watch the film here
A bit of creative thinking
As a result, with a bit of creative thinking, RaviOllie and FareShare South West were able to provide 600 meals! RaviOllie have also now adopted a ‘one for one’ model throughout the business which means they donate one meal to feed a vulnerable person for every order placed.
“At FareShare South West, we have the infrastructure and know-how to redistribute tonnes of food at a time but we’re nimble enough to adapt and innovate too. Take this partnership with RaviOllie: with a bit of creative thinking, they’ve been able to transform surplus food from a nearby farm into nourishing, delicious meals, ready for us to freeze and distribute to charities and community groups across our community.” Gene Joyner, CEO at FareShare South West
Find out more about the partnership
Ben Evans, [email protected]