IGD relaunches Feeding Britain’s Future, invites businesses to help next generation

With youth unemployment rising and more than one million 16 to 24-year-olds in the UK not in education, employment or training (NEET), businesses across the UK are stepping up action to strengthen workforce pipelines. At the same time, labour and skills shortages continue across the food system.  

Against this backdrop, businesses and industry bodies are increasing action to connect young people to work, with IGD’s Feeding Britain’s Future providing a practical, scalable model. 

Last week, we relaunched Feeding Britain’s Future at County Hall, London, to unite the industry in helping more young people access meaningful work experience while building the skilled workforce our sector needs. 

Our ambition is to engage every UK secondary school by 2030, help more young people from becoming NEET, and inspire a generation to build careers in food and drink. 

A modern, scalable approach 

The relaunch is backed by a practical new model for action, developed by The Careers & Enterprise Company, to deliver high-quality, modern work experience at scale across the food system. 

This new model moves beyond traditional block placements and reflects the realities of modern working life. It combines virtual experiences, employer-led projects, site visits and short placements, creating more flexible and inclusive opportunities for young people, and more practical ways to engage for employers.  

Businesses can contribute in different ways, from one-hour engagements to multi-day experiences, making it easier for organisations of all sizes to get involved. 

Playing a leading role 

As Ashwin Prasad, Tesco UK CEO, said at the launch, the sector needs the next generation “as much as they need us”, underlining that supporting young people into work is not only the right thing to do, but essential to sustaining capacity, building skills, and remaining resilient in the years ahead. 

Food and drink is especially well placed to play a leading role because it’s accessible to people from all backgrounds and often provides a first step into work, offering opportunities to build skills, confidence, and long-term careers. 

For IGD, this relaunch builds on more than a decade of work which has reached over 133,000 young people across a third of UK secondary schools.  

As part of the relaunched Feeding Britain’s Future, these workshops now form part of a more comprehensive programme of work experience and careers support, with an ambition to reach 50,000 young people annually, and every secondary school, by 2030. 

Creating meaningful experiences of work 

Speaking at the launch, Sarah Bradbury, Chief Executive at IGD, said: “Food and drink is one of the UK’s biggest and most diverse sectors, but too many young people still don’t see it as a place to build their future. Through Feeding Britain’s Future, we want to change that by opening up access, raising awareness and creating meaningful experiences of work.” 

Alongside work experience, Feeding Britain’s Future will provide accessible careers resources for students, teachers and parents, develop partnerships with universities to raise the profile of food and drink careers, and deliver free early-career learning. This will help train 6,000 young workers in 2026. 

Work experience pilot groups across the country start this year. Learning from these pilots will be used to develop resources, templates and guidance to support delivery at scale in 2027. 

For businesses, this is a practical way to address skills shortages now while building future talent pipelines through flexible engagement that can scale across locations and roles. 

Help feed the future of our industry 

If you’re interested in joining our movement, please email [email protected] or visit the Feeding Britain’s Future page.