How can a restaurant become an integral part of its local community?

Jade is Programme Coordinator at Real Farming Trust, managing a project to innovate ways to address food justice with nutritious sustainably sourced ready meals. Ready Healthy Eat works with local delivery partners across the UK. Jade has worked in the local and community food sector for about thirty years.

I co-manage a community food hub in Stroud which supplies frozen meals cooked by the Long Table. Recently we have started collecting surplus food from the Farmer’s market for our community fridge and get a delivery of dried goods from Fair Shares once a week. All available on a pay as you feel basis. We work in collaboration with other community hubs around the town.

I have a background in ecology, promoting community based food projects and now manage Stroud Brewery, dedicated to organic production and a certified B Corps. We also have a (normally) lively bar, an important part of our income, but it also connects us to our community and place.

Sue O’Neill-Berest is the Food Education Manager at Cyrenians, a third sector organisation that supports people experiencing exclusion and homelessness. She has over 20 years of experience within the food industry as a chef after completing training at Leith’s School of Food & Wine in London. She manages several other social projects including masterclasses; supper clubs and skills’ training programmes. These projects are informed by an underlying ethos of the ability of food, its preparation and sharing of it, to change lives and that having someone to eat with is just as important as having food to eat.

Sophie is a coordinator at The Hornbeam Centre in Walthamstow, London, working in community food projects. The Hornbeam is a community space focusing on low-cost and low-impact living. On site, our community cafe is run by The Gleaners, who run a pay-what-you-feel vegan cafe, using surplus food.