Every morning our volunteers collect what shops and market stalls cannot sell: bent carrots, bruised apples, yesterday’s loaves, the last box of tomatoes. By one o’clock it is lunch. By five, whatever is left is in the community fridge for anyone to take home.

Wonky carrots make gorgeous soup.

SAVED FROM THE BIN, SERVED WITH A GRIN

See today’s menu How rescue works

Small kitchen. Big appetite.

A YEAR IN THE POT

Illustrative figures for a fictional community kitchen, showing how a real one might share its year at a glance.

Of surplus food rescued from shops, farms and market stalls.

38t

Lunches served at the long table, pay as you feel.

21,400

Bags filled from the community fridge by neighbours.

1,260

Volunteers on the rota, from drivers to washers-up.

140

FOUR WAYS IN

Eat lunch

Two teal bowls of tomato soup topped with microgreens on a wooden table

Rescue food

A man in a red cap loading a crate of vegetables into the back of a white van

Use the fridge

An open fridge filled with fresh vegetables, fruit and bottled juices

Learn to cook

A woman in a patterned apron leading a cooking class at a steel counter, students in the foreground

No forms, no means test, no awkward questions at the door. Everyone eats at the same long table and pays what they can: a fiver, a pound, an hour at the sink or nothing at all. Below, a few regulars, as fictional as the kitchen, on what lunch means to them.

Saved from the bin. Served with a grin.

Pull up a chair Volunteer with us

Marguerite · Volunteer cook

“I came in for soup on a Tuesday and stayed to peel potatoes. That was three years ago. I am still peeling.”

A smiling older woman with glasses and a blue apron whisking batter in a steel bowl

Kwame · Greengrocer and partner

“At closing time I used to bin a crate like this. Now the van picks it up and I eat it for lunch the next day.”

A smiling man in a brown apron holding a crate of cherry tomatoes in a shop doorway

Hannah · Sorting volunteer

“I sort the fruit on Wednesdays. Bruised apples go to the crumble pile, and I make sure the crumble pile is generous.”

A smiling woman with curly hair and glasses behind a crate of oranges and broccoli

Priya · Head cook

“Every morning I have no idea what is for lunch until the van comes back. Best job in the world.”

A smiling woman in a green apron and denim shirt standing at a gas hob with a saucepan

One cheerful email a month: what we rescued, what we cooked, which classes have spaces and which shop saved us forty cabbages.

One email a month, unsubscribe any time. This sample form belongs to a fictional community kitchen: please do not enter sensitive information.

The Leftovers

A row of glass jars of colourful pickled vegetables against a red wall

Count me in