Background

 FareShare is a leading charitable organisation addressing two of the key issues of modern UK society:  Food Waste and Food Poverty.

 By 2009 they felt they had reached a strategic point in their development. They knew they could divert much more food from landfill and help many more people around the country but they found themselves with the classic chicken and egg problem:  how to fund a new a Business Development Manager before they had increased their operations to pay for it?

The Business Case

FareShare 1^st is a Social Enterprise operating as the trading arm of the FareShare charity, which, as well as sourcing food, also generates income from their network of food distributors. 

The way FareShare works is to collect food from producers, distributors and retailers that would otherwise go to waste and to charge less for this service than a commercial waste collection company would.  This food is then redistributed through the FareShare network to community organisations.

Expansion of the trading arm would increase income thereby reducing the network’s dependence on donations or charitable and Government funding.   In addition it diverts more food from landfill, reducing CO₂ emissions as well as meeting the social and moral imperative of reducing food waste.

All this whilst improving the nutrition of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.

Practical Action

Although much of the early work involved planning, the focus and clear direction re-invigorated the existing organisation.  The Director of Operations was able to use his knowledge and contacts to identify and pursue new sources of food. 

Example: a supplier manufactures an own brand product (from soup to biscuits) for a major supermarket.  Neither the supplier nor the supermarket buyer can be sure how many units will be needed so the manufacturer ‘over produces’ a contingency buffer.  As a result there will be spare products, brand new, undistributed that the supermarket won’t use.  This food would normally go to waste, a massive waste of resources and an unnecessary expense for the supplier. Armed with this industry knowledge the new post holder was able to approach the large supermarkets to speak at their annual supplier conferences and arrange to divert those products directly from the supplier into the FareShare network.

Where we are now

The role of Director of Operations and FareShare 1^st became self funding much quicker than anticipated so the organisation had the confidence to appoint the interim post holder to a full time position.  Although this has led to more, and major, industry partners delivering surplus food, with associated revenues, the real gain has been in terms of profile and acceptance.  FareShare is now firmly embedded within food manufacture, distribution, retailing and the large trade bodies as the partner of choice.  Government too has embraced the organisation, writing FareShare into DEFRA’s Food Sustainability Strategy for the UK.

Voted ‘Britain’s Most Admired Charity’ in 2010, FareShare has been receiving a much higher profile outside the industry through such initiatives as the 10,000 Pallet Challenge, Feeding the 5,000  www.feeding5k.org and the Great British Waste Menu http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tkr88 , which were widely covered in the mainstream media.  They are building on this recognition to build consumer pressure for the UK food industry ‘to do the right thing’ when it comes to food surpluses.

Some of the lessons learned over the life of the intervention have led to changes in practice.  The amount of ‘resource’ required to keep the food flowing has proved to be higher than anticipated so FareShare has responded with two full-time Business Development Managers.  They are working hard to move beyond the good relationships built up with individuals to permanent, robust, systems within the food organisations.  Only by embedding FareShare within the food industry can a continuity of supply be ensured and an even ‘buy in’ to the process across all levels, from management to the shop floor. 

New sources are constantly needed, producers, forced to look at their surpluses and waste, find ways of selling or reducing these - a win for sustainability, if not for FareShare volumes.  However, their expansion has had a significant boost recently, broadening their net beyond the ‘manufactured’ (ambient) food sector into produce, with a national supplier delivering meat, fruit and vegetables to all their depots on a regular basis.

All this leaves FareShare as a focused and very knowledgeable enterprise with an ever expanding network of strong relationships within the food industry.  This platform is allowing them to bring about fundamental change to the systems for dealing with waste and surplus across the whole sector, reduce the volumes of food going to landfill while offering more help, training and steady employment to the disadvantaged within our community.

Download the full case-study (PDF 454kb)

Case Study by Kate Lord