Inside the mission to feed the UK’s hungry kids in the holidays: ‘If we had to buy food we wouldn’t survive’

In other countries we’d call it aid. Lorries were arriving at the warehouse, full of food: surplus from supermarkets, wonky veg from farms, mislabelled products from wholesalers. It was Thursday, and by the end of the week 11 tonnes of food were due to have gone in and out, delivered to 20 different locations on any given day. But the 170 regular volunteers and 28 staff behind this massive operation, facilitating some 6.2 million meals a year, were not working to get food to shops or restaurants. Instead, the lorries leaving the depot call in at food banks, elderly lunch clubs, homelessness charities, women’s refuges, and after-school clubs for children.

You may assume this doesn’t happen here, trucks full of food rushing around to those who need it, who do not have the money to feed themselves, whose bad fortune sees them cut off from nutrition. 

It does. Food insecurity affects 14% of households, representing seven million adults, and one in 20 households say they skip eating for a whole day due to lack of access to food. Some 18% of children live in food poverty. This only intensifies as the school holidays roll around.

All, then, that keeps the most vulnerable fed in The Seventh Richest Country in the World – an oft-repeated line starting to feel a bit thin on days like this – is a patchwork of groups, relying on donated food, or food provided so cheaply it may as well be donated. And where does that food come from? That was the reason I was wearing the warehouse’s mandatory hi-vis jacket.

Read more:

• I reached out to a food bank after losing everything – it changed my life forever
• Inside the food banks seeing ‘highest demand ever seen’ as cost of living harms families
• Having to go to a food bank sticks with you – it’s time politicians knew about it

‘It was nerve-wracking the first time’

The warehouse, in Moulsecoomb on the outskirts of Brighton, is run by FareShare Sussex and Surrey (FSS), one of 35 regional branches of the national charity FareShare. It’s founded on a simple idea: the way we all produce, buy and consume food means there is a colossal amount of waste. By a low estimate, FSS CEO Dan Slatter told me, 20% of all food produced in the UK never makes it onto a plate. Whether on environmental or ethical grounds, getting this food to people who would otherwise go hungry.

The devil is in the details. “Some people might be annoyed if they get potatoes every single week, so you go, ‘OK, do you want a tray of steak?’, and then they’re happy for a little bit,” said senior warehouse manager Steve Moore. Moore was homeless and using food banks when he started volunteering at FareShare a decade ago, needing something to do while his daughter was at school.

“It was nerve wracking coming the first time,” he said. “I felt I was doing a good thing. I’ve been on the receiving end and now I’m helping people that are in that position.” He now oversees five staff in Brighton and another three in Guildford. Much of the food which comes into the warehouse will be out within a day or two – it’s Moore’s job to manage the flow.

On the day I visit, Moore has tomatoes, yoghurt drinks, letture, cooking sauces, potatoes and celery all coming in. Sometimes deliveries are easy to bundle up and send out – other times it’s a case of ringing round some of the 248 groups the charity works with, trying to find a taker for a glut of items.

About 20% of the costs of running the operation come through membership fees paid by charities – the other 80% comes from fundraising, explains Slatter. This means FSS can deliver food for 30p a kilo, meaning every pound covers five meals. By comparison, he said, were charities to buy food at a low-cost retailer, it’d set them back £1.36 a kilo.

Half of those charities are expecting another spike in demand, similar to the start of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis, Slatter said. Summer is a pinch point. Families who have free school meals will suddenly have to feed their kids. “That is a real challenge at this time of year, how we get more food to that cohort of just short of 40% of our membership working with children and young families,” said Slatter. “That’s what we’re pointing our finger at right now.”

Summer also brings opportunities. Slatter even gave me a crash course in courgette harvests and supply chains. “Right now, courgettes shouldn’t quite yet be coming into the warehouses but because of the very dry period we’ve had, we’re just starting our third heat wave of the summer,” he said. “There’s not been enough water, so the crops are harvesting earlier, which, in some ways, is good, but the problem is that there’ll be a short tail at the end.”

Five years ago, things went supersonic for FareShare. When Marcus Rashford launched his campaign to feed the nation’s hungry children, it was FareShare he decided to work with, helping them reach a £20 million fundraising target and almost double the amount of meals they delivered nationally.

“When someone like that, in the public eye, puts their effort and their name to highlight a problem, it has a huge lurch forward, and some of that is unmeasurable,” said Slatter.

“Someone like Marcus Rashford pointing at that doing something about it had an impact in the moment, but it’s a lasting, legacy impact,” he said.

Down the road in Newhaven, a destination for the food leaving the warehouse also has the ripples of Rashford’s campaigning to thank, in a way.

‘If we had to buy food we wouldn’t survive’

During the school holidays, 40 kids a day will pile into the village hall-style building home to Nippers. “Some children won’t go home to another meal, and when we feed them that’s it,” said Pam Perry, who said she’ll keep doing this until she hits 80 in four years’ time. Days run from 7.30am until 6pm, and children get breakfast, dinner, tea and two snacks.

The food they give the children comes from unexpected sources. “If we had to buy food we wouldn’t survive,” said Perry. “In the good old days we used to buy everything in.”

On Mondays, they collect from KFC, organised through the FareShare Go app. A local branch of the fast food chain blast freezes its already-cooked surplus, and packages it with cooking instructions.

Tuesday will see donated food come in from Tesco and Waitrose, then on Wednesday it’s KFC again. “The KFC they’ve had too much of now, so we have to, when we make curries, I peel the outside off and use the chicken that’s in the middle,” said Perry. 

Thursday – the day I visit – is the day of the FareShare delivery. It’s brought a load of pizza bases, which are all going in the freezer. “They’re going to be making their own pizzas all summer,” Perry said. There are pineapples, watermelons (which will all get eaten), gammon, potatoes, broccoli (the broccoli won’t get eaten, said Perry, so it’s outside on a stand for anybody to take), and, intriguingly, a box of candied oranges.

“I haven’t quite decided what to do with the orange,” Perry said as she offered a slice. “I was just thinking, could I convert it to marmalade? Because they love marmalade sandwiches because Paddington Bear has them.”

Operating like this during the summer means parents are able to stay in work – and Nippers also receives funding to take children to allow their parents to find work. “We’ve had people start work because we’re here, which is good,” said Perry.

Yet funding is precarious, with Perry only knowing she has security until the end of next year. Some money comes from the Department for Education, via the county council. But a large sum comes from what is known as the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) fund – which was introduced by the Conservative government off the back of Rashford’s campaign. But this £200m-a-year fund has recently had a stay of execution: due to end at the end of 2024, it has now been extended until this Christmas. The wraparound funding to allow parents to find jobs also ends in October 2026.

If that happens, staff will be made redundant and Perry will have to stop volunteering. But it is the kids who would feel the impact most deeply. “They’d be on the streets. There is nothing else,” she said.

‘Food gathers people together’

This whole endeavour is not something which happens under the radar, away from the eyes of officialdom. In June, the government announced £13.6m in funding for food charities to rescue 19,000 tonnes of food from farms. FareShare is getting £9.2m, along with its partners, to expand across the country. It aims to increase its ability to redistribute surplus food from farms by 28%.

Demand for that rescued food remains high. Slatter explained the charity prioritises partners with wraparound services who look at what’s underneath the reasons for hunger. Food is a way in, a spark of connection to let wider issues be addressed.

“If you can work with some of the root causes, that’s the best chance of lifting someone out of poverty in a sustained way, so people aren’t just caught in this washing machine, going round and round in this awful poverty cycle,” he said.

“Food can help deal with loneliness. Food can really help people who are wrestling with their wellbeing and their mental health, because it gathers people together, it neutralises social standings and social imbalance, and it can draw people together.”

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