Drivers and riders pick up from shops, farms and market stalls at closing time and first thing in the morning. Nothing is too small: one box of lettuces counts.
At the kitchen door, sorters check every crate. Good to cook, good for the fridge or good for compost. Dates and temperatures are logged.
The cooks look at the pile, scratch their heads and chalk up the day’s menu by ten. Lunch is on the long table at twelve.
Lunch for everyone, the rest into the community fridge and the peelings to a garden down the road. The crates go back for tomorrow.
Slide to see what a morning in a busy kitchen can do for a crate nobody wanted. These are two different photographs, used for illustration.
A crate of tomatoes, peppers, chillies and aubergines from a market stall became sixty bowls of smoky tomato soup and a tub of salsa for the fridge.
A sample Wednesday, hour by hour. Every crate is weighed on the way in and logged on the way out, so a real kitchen could tell its neighbours and funders exactly how much food it saved and where it went. Nothing leaves without a label, a date and a destination: the long table, the fridge or the compost. Times are illustrative, and the shops, farms and people on this page are fictional.
A DAY IN THE LIFE
A sample Wednesday, hour by hour. Every crate is weighed on the way in and logged on the way out, so a real kitchen could tell its neighbours and funders exactly how much food it saved and where it went. Nothing leaves without a label, a date and a destination: the long table, the fridge or the compost. Times are illustrative, and the shops, farms and people on this page are fictional.
7.30am
The first driver loads empty crates and heads for the wholesale market, a flask of tea in the cup holder.
9.00am
Bakery bread, three boxes of peppers and a mysterious sack of celeriac.
9.30am
Everything checked, weighed and logged. Bruised fruit goes straight to the crumble pile.
10.00am
The cooks decide what is for lunch. Celeriac soup, obviously.
12.00pm
Doors open, bowls out, long table full by quarter past.
3.00pm
Labelled tubs and fresh veg go into the community fridge.
5.00pm
Compost to the garden, crates washed and the kettle on for the evening class.
Everything left on the shelves at closing time, collected by cargo bike at half past five.
Carrots with legs, potatoes with noses and cabbages a size too big for the shops. Collected every Monday.
Tomatoes, herbs, fruit and the occasional crate of mangoes, saved as the stalls pack down.
Milk, yoghurt and cheese, handed over cold and logged straight into the community fridge.
Grounds for the garden, cake ends for the trifle and a very generous barista.