Formation | 1994 |
---|---|
Type | Charity |
Focus | Food waste in the United Kingdom, food poverty and volunteering |
Headquarters | 19th Floor Millbank Tower, 21-24 Millbank, London SW1P 4QP |
Location | |
Members | Over 9,000 [1] |
George Wright | |
Website | fareshare.org.uk |
FareShare is a charity network established in 1994, which aims at relieving food poverty and reducing food waste in the United Kingdom. It does this by obtaining good quality surplus food from the food industry that would otherwise have gone to waste and sending it to frontline charities and community groups across the UK.
FareShare works with all sectors of the supply chain: producers, manufacturers and retailers. A number of the major UK food retailers have encouraged their suppliers to work with FareShare to minimise food waste.
In December 1994, homelessness charity Crisis partnered with Sainsbury's to establish Crisis FareShare, a London-based operation which aimed to co-ordinate the redistribution of surplus food from industry donors to hostels and homeless shelters in the city. [2] [3] Marks & Spencer and Pret a Manger were among its first suppliers. [4] By 1999, the charity was operating out of seven cities, including Birmingham, Manchester and Huddersfield. [5]
In 2004, FareShare became an independent charity, in order to expand its operation further and support others beside the homeless. [2] The FareShare network currently comprises more than twenty regional centres throughout the UK, although the majority of these are independently managed by local organisations.
In 2015, FareShare launched its FareShare Go app, which connects frontline charities with local supermarkets that have surplus stock available. Participating supermarkets include Tesco, Waitrose and Asda, [6] and in 2022, Booker became the first wholesaler to sign up to the scheme. [7]
In February 2018, Asda committed to a £20 million investment in FareShare and The Trussell Trust, with the aim of helping more than one million people out of food poverty over the following three years. This included the funding of new refrigeration equipment and delivery vehicles. [8] [9]
During the Covid-19 lockdowns starting on 23 March 2020, the FareShare network remained open and operational to continue to get food to vulnerable people. In the first month of lockdown, the amount of surplus food received and distributed by FareShare more than doubled, following the overnight closure of the restaurant, pub, hotel and catering trades. [10] Supermarket partners such as the Co-op also provided additional food donations and funding to help FareShare meet the increased demand from frontline charity members. [10] [11] In December 2020, the company received a £16 million government grant to support its operation through the winter. [12]
According to its annual report, FareShare redistributed 53,894 tonnes of food in 2021/2022, equivalent to 128.3 million meals. [1] This food is delivered to a broad range of frontline charities and community groups across the UK including foodbanks, homeless shelters, day centres, women's refuge centres and children's breakfast clubs.
FareShare provides food for children's holiday clubs as part of its #ActiveAte campaign, which endeavours to raise the profile of the issue of "Holiday Hunger", where children eligible for a free school lunch do not have access to this meal during the 13 weeks of school holidays. In 2020, FareShare partnered with England and Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford, who now works with the charity to raise awareness of this issue and to campaign for donations from industry suppliers. [13] Rashford also leads the Child Food Poverty Taskforce, of which FareShare is a founding member; the taskforce seeks the urgent implementation of the three recommendations focused on supporting children in the National Food Strategy published by Henry Dimbleby.
In 2010, FareShare won "Britain's Most Admired Charity" at the Third Sector awards. [14] In 2017, it won "Charity of the Year" at both the Charity Times awards [15] and Third Sector Awards, [16] and was selected for The Telegraph's Christmas Charity Appeal. [17] In 2019, the charity won the Food and Drink Federation's Campaign of the Year award for the Feed People First campaign, which helped to unlock £15 million of DEFRA funding to "level the playing field" for the food industry of the cost to redistribute food to vulnerable people, as opposed to sending it to landfill or anaerobic digestion. [18] It also won the Charity Times 2019 award for "Corporate National Partnership with a Retailer" [19] and the Business Charity Awards 2019 "Consortium" award, along with the Trussell Trust and Asda, for the "Fight Hunger Create Change" project. [20]
Safeway Limited is a British groceries brand, and former chain of supermarkets and convenience shops. The British Safeway was founded in 1962 by the American Safeway Inc., before being sold to Argyll Foods in 1987. It was later listed on the London Stock Exchange. It was purchased by Morrisons in March 2004. Most of its 479 shops were rebranded as Morrisons, with others being sold. Safeway-branded shops disappeared from the United Kingdom on 24 November 2005.
Asda Stores Limited, trading as Asda and often styled as ASDA, is a British supermarket chain. Its headquarters are in Leeds, England. The company was incorporated as Associated Dairies and Farm Stores in 1949. It expanded into Southern England during the 1970s and 1980s, and acquired Allied Carpets, 61 large Gateway Supermarkets and other businesses, such as MFI Group. It sold these acquisitions during the 1990s to concentrate on the supermarkets. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange until 1999 when it was acquired by Walmart for £6.7 billion. Asda was the second-largest supermarket chain in the United Kingdom between 2003 and 2014 by market share, at which point it fell into third place.
Waitrose Limited, trading as Waitrose & Partners, is a brand of British supermarkets, founded in 1904 as Waite, Rose & Taylor, later shortened to Waitrose. It was acquired in 1937 by employee-owned retailer John Lewis Partnership, which still sells groceries under the brand. Its head offices are located in Bracknell, Berkshire.
Booths is a chain of high-end supermarkets in Northern England. Most of its branches are in Lancashire, but there are also branches in Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire. It has been described as the "Waitrose of the North" by sources such as The Daily Telegraph.
A food bank is a non-profit, charitable organization that distributes food to those who have difficulty purchasing enough to avoid hunger, usually through intermediaries like food pantries and soup kitchens. Some food banks distribute food directly with their food pantries.
Food rescue, also called food recovery, food salvage or surplus food redistribution, is the practice of gleaning edible food that would otherwise go to waste from places such as farms, produce markets, grocery stores, restaurants, or dining facilities and distributing it to local emergency food programs.
Higgidy is a fresh food manufacturer based in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, England. The company produces a range of pies, quiches, tortillas and rolls. It was co-founded by Camilla Stephens and James Foottit in 2003. The name of the company originates from an early description of the uneven appearance of their pies by a visiting child.
Food waste in the United Kingdom is a subject of environmental, and socioeconomic concern that has received widespread media coverage and been met with varying responses from government. Since 1915, food waste has been identified as a considerable problem and has been the subject of ongoing media attention, intensifying with the launch of the "Love Food, Hate Waste" campaign in 2007. Food waste has been discussed in newspaper articles, news reports and television programmes, which have increased awareness of it as a public issue. To tackle waste issues, encompassing food waste, the government-funded "Waste & Resources Action Programme" (WRAP) was created in 2000.
FareShare is an Australian not-for-profit food rescue organisation that operates Australia's largest charity kitchens located in Melbourne and Brisbane. Its mission is to mobilise volunteers to cook delicious, free meals from rescued, donated and homegrown ingredients to improve the lives of Australians in hardship.
Leket Israel, The National Food Bank, a registered nonprofit Israel-based charity, is the leading food rescue organization in Israel, serving 175,000+ needy people weekly. Leket Israel rescues surplus agricultural produce and collects excess cooked meals for redistribution to the needy throughout Israel via its network of 200+ nonprofit organization (NPO) partners.
Chronic hunger has affected a sizable proportion of the UK's population throughout its history. Following improved economic conditions that followed World War II, hunger became a less pressing issue. Yet since the lasting global inflation in the price of food that began in late 2006 and especially since the financial crisis of 2009, long term hunger began to return as a prominent social problem. Albeit only affecting a small minority of the UK's population, by December 2013, according to a group of doctors and academics writing in the British Medical Journal, hunger in the UK had reached the level of a "public health emergency".
The Trussell Trust is an NGO and charity that works to end the need for food banks in the United Kingdom. It "is based on, shaped, and guided by Christian principles" and supports a network of over 1,200 food bank centres to provide emergency food and compassionate, practical support to people in crisis, while campaigning for long-term change to the structural issues that lock people into poverty. Its main office is in Salisbury, England.
Approved Food is an online discount food retailer based in Dodworth, South Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom. The company retails products that are near or past their best before date or products that are considered difficult to sell by other retailers. It is the UK's largest online retailer for short dated and residual stock. As well as food and drink, Approved Food sells a range of household goods, beauty products, pet supplies and alcohol.
Marcus Rashford is an English professional footballer who plays as a forward for Premier League club Manchester United and the England national team.
Felix Project is a United Kingdom charitable organization that saves surplus food from suppliers and redistributes it to charities. It has the dual aim to help reduce food surplus. The Waste & Resources Action Programme estimate that 10 million tonnes of food was thrown away in the UK in 2016 and help relieve food poverty (Sustain estimate 18% or one in five London pupils are at risk of hunger every day.
City Harvest London is a charitable organisation focused on alleviating food insecurity and food waste across London. City Harvest feeds over 12,000 Londoners a day with quality, nutritious, surplus food from a myriad of food producers. City Harvest delivers food to over 350 organisations and projects in London that serve almost every vulnerable group in the capital including but not limited to; children, refugees, families, women facing domestic violence, the homeless. Food often acts as a tool that breaks down barriers between organisations and their users and becomes a gateway to services which address other societal issues.
Neighbourly is a community impact and giving platform based in Bristol, UK. The platform hosts pages for upwards of 30,000 small charities and community organisations across the UK and Ireland, connecting them with businesses offering surplus food and products, volunteer time and financial donations.
Christina Adane is a British social campaigner responsible for the campaign to feed disadvantaged children who were entitled to school meals free of charge in term-time but not provided for in the summer holidays, and so at risk of hunger. This campaign was given a high profile by footballer Marcus Rashford and as a result the UK government changed its policy in 2020. Adane was one of the BBC's 100 Women of 2020, "the hundred most inspiring and influential women in the world".
The Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN) is the UK network of independent food aid providers. Its membership includes over 550 independent food banks as well as other types of food aid provider. A charity since October 2018, IFAN supports and advocates on behalf of its member food aid organisations, collates independent food bank data and campaigns for changes that would end the need charitable food aid in the UK.