In a large, bright room in Gospel Oak, north-west London, 20 green plastic boxes have been arranged on the floor in an approximate circle. Four volunteers are moving between them, putting food items into each: a packet of cornflakes, bags of rice, four oranges, a handful of large mushrooms.
Before long – a mango, a jar of chickpeas – the boxes are almost full. From a large sack, one of the volunteers takes a fistful of garlic bulbs to drop in each container: “It’s winter. People need garlic,” she says with a grin. These crammed, healthy boxes of food will go a long way to feeding a family each week. The cost to each recipient: £5.
This is the Lismore food cooperative, a group of 22 neighbours from a local housing estate who came together two years ago to share food – some of it excess supermarket stock, some bought in bulk or sourced elsewhere – and to feed their families cheaply. As word quickly spread among neighbours, others wanted to join and were encouraged to start their own group operating out of the same building. There are now six co-ops here, with others in the community eager to start their own.
Food cooperatives are not new – the movement originated in the 1840s in Rochdale, and many similar groups have long flourished across the UK. But as the cost of food and other essentials has soared and food banks multiplied, a diverse range of community food initiatives – founded, in many cases, to tackle food waste or bring neighbours together – have similarly seen their numbers balloon.
This time last year, Cooperation Town, which supports the Gospel Oak groups, had six co-ops under its umbrella; there are now about 20, and it expects soon to have twice that.
Also multiplying is a network called Your Local Pantry, which operates on a more formal scale, inviting members to “shop” for a large quantity of food and other groceries from volunteer-run premises for as little as £3 a week.
Originating in Stockport a decade ago and now (loosely) under the auspices of the Church Action on Poverty, Your Local Pantry oversaw 15 pantries nationally at the start of the pandemic. Now there are more than 80, and a new partnership with the Co-op supermarket will see that number increase to 225.
Community fridges, too, have doubled to more than 430 over the past two years, says Ellen Rutherford from Hubbub, which oversees the national network. These are shared fridges “where anyone can share or take home good food that would otherwise go to waste”, she says.
Unlike pantries and most co-ops, community fridges are free, and while “their main aim is to be a community-led solution to food waste”, according to Rutherford, demand for them, too, has soared. One fridge network in Milton Keynes normally shares 3.9 tonnes of surplus food a week – in 10 days over Christmas it distributed 11 tonnes, reaching 1,800 families.
These are diverse initiatives and their growth is not only about the cost of living. Cooperation Town would love to see a co-op in every street in every town, says Shiri Shalmy, one of the group’s core organisers – precisely because it is not a food bank. “This is not about us going begging for food to support our children. It’s about each one of us saying, ‘We’re smart, we’re capable. We know our neighbours. We can do our shopping together. And through doing it together, we save money and we build power.”
Members may not be on the breadline, but cheaper food is still greatly appreciated, says Brad Hepburn, a former vet originally from Massachusetts who was forced to retire because of illness and now survives on a small pension. When first approached, as chair of the local resident’s association, he assumed the co-op would be for people worse off. “But when I came and saw how it worked, I said, ‘sign me up’.” As he lives alone, Hepburn found he had too much food, so he divides his box with a neighbour, each paying £2.50.
“I would be too ashamed to tell my family that I am going to a food bank, but I am really proud to tell them I am part of a food co-op,” he says. “But I had to go through a learning curve myself.”
The group has become what Shalmy calls “a community of friendship” that allows everyone to participate, from the man in his 80s who comes early with his wife each week to lay out the boxes, to the young local woman who has taken on the role of treasurer and will soon be training others to take over.
Those involved in community pantries say they are important because they are not about handouts but “dignity and choice”. Jo Green, the co-manager of a My Local Pantry that operates from a church hall in North End, Portsmouth, previously managed the food bank that, until 18 months ago, was run from the same site.
“The difference is that there’s a stigma with food banks,” she says. “The beautiful thing about pantries is that it doesn’t matter whether you’re here because you want to help reduce food waste, or you need help with your food shop. We’re open to everybody.”
Members pay £4 a week for the opportunity to choose a set number of items from that week’s range – worth about £25 to £30 if bought elsewhere. Because the bulk of their food is supermarket surplus, “you never know what’s coming til it gets here”, says Green. “Sometimes it’s, oh my goodness, what am I going to get today?” Fresh meat is particularly prized, she says. Their membership has doubled in a year to 160 families.
There is much to be welcomed in the expansion of alternative ways of sourcing affordable food. But all three networks acknowledge the irony that they are reliant, to varying degrees, on surplus food unused or discarded by the supermarket industry – and they are not alone.
FareShare, the largest distributor of charitable and surplus food in Britain, supplies about 9,500 groups, including food banks, co-ops, community cafes and school clubs, but it currently has a waiting list of 1,500. “We believe this is just the tip of the iceberg for the number of charities and community groups needing more support,” says Ben Ashmore, the organisation’s head of marketing.
“Ninety per cent of our charities have told us the demand for support has skyrocketed this year.
“We do not have enough food to meet this soaring demand, so we’re asking the government to provide us with £25m to help us unlock an additional 42,500 tonnes of surplus food, the equivalent of 100m meals, to the people worst hit by the cost of living crisis.”
James Henderson, My Local Pantry development coordinator, acknowledges that on one level its growth is “damning”. “I think we’re not doing as much as we can to support people who are vulnerable in our society. Increasingly, we’re seeing a change in our membership, more people are being drawn into vulnerability.”
For this reason, he says, his organisation cannot only be about food. It is also developing a project called Speaking Truth to Power, to encourage and equip people to speak out about the systemic changes that are needed. “I really believe that people in our communities do have the answers, but they’re just not being listened to.”
For Cooperation Town’s Shalmy, too, co-ops should mean much more than affordable food and a sense of community. Rather, she says, the solidarity and confidence that can be gained from joining a co-op might just be the first step towards changing in the way food is grown and sold in Britain, a system that “has waste built into it.
“I don’t like to use the word ‘empower’, because we have power,” she says. “We just need to learn how to exercise it. Maybe we can change the system if we learn how to organise against it.”
