The rise of food clubs and how they differ from food banks

The small row of shops on Manchester’s Haughton Green estate have seen better days. Blistered white paintwork frames the local pizza takeaway, as well as a Go Local convenience store whose window ads scream about the cheap booze available inside.

Next door, though, an excitable hubbub fills the air, as a queue forms outside the Haughton Green Community Centre. A cross-section of locals is braving the cold to await the arrival of a van from charity The Bread & Butter Thing, which turns up laden with everything from fresh carrots and parsnips to Heck sausages and Kit Kat multipacks.

A group of hardy volunteers is soon unloading the delivery, ready to hand three carrier bags full of food to those in need, for just £8.50. And that payment is key here, for this is not a food bank, it’s a food ‘club’ – with proponents insisting this model is the way forward in the battle against food poverty in the UK.

So, what is a food club? How does it differ from a food bank? How do they work with the industry? And how can retailers and suppliers get involved?

At their core, food clubs are places where people can access affordable, nutritious food. The items are usually surplus sourced from retailers and suppliers by charities, which are then delivered to food clubs across the country, where it’s sold for a nominal fee by local volunteers in community centres, church halls, schools and sometimes purpose-built social supermarkets.

Food club definitions

Unlike food banks, there are also different models. Not all food clubs look the same. Some, such as The Bread & Butter Thing, follow a ‘veg box push model’, where everyone receives the same large but random assortment of items. There’s the ‘choice model’, often taking the form of what’s become known as a ‘food pantry’ where people can select what they want and pay for items separately, like at Your Local Pantry and Sofea, which runs 37 community larders. And there’s the ‘social supermarket model’, like Community Shop, where surplus food is sold at heavily discounted rates in a standalone, supermarket-like store.

What unites food clubs, however, is the small fee members are asked to pay for their goods. “Food clubs sit in between food banks and everyday retail, because they’re for people who are trying to stretch their budgets and are not necessarily in crisis,” says Mark Game, founder of The Bread & Butter Thing.

“They’re usually looking for ways to remain independent. It’s important to them that they can stand on their own two feet and still put food on the table. So, there’s a really dignified principle to food clubs.”

Shelley Johnson, an effervescent woman clad in bright orange leggings and a pink puffer jacket, comes to the Haughton Green food club every week. Although she has never used a food bank, she says there is a certain level of “shame” associated with doing so.

“Whereas you’re paying for this, so it’s not the same feeling. It makes a big difference,” she says. “It’s better for those ‘in-between’ people who need a bit of extra help – and there’s a lot of those people.”

The relative lack of stigma attached to using a food club also means members are more receptive to other services beyond food. Many food clubs seek to build resilience into deprived communities by bringing in and offering expert advice on debt, energy usage, health and more.

Andrew Edlin, senior sustainability manager at Morrisons, which has been partnering with The Bread & Butter Thing since day one, says the retailer was sold on the fact that food clubs are “more than just a food donation system”.

“When people hit food banks the crisis is already happening, and we obviously need to help people in that situation, but we also need to help them before they get to that situation,” he says.

“By providing extra services like getting Citizens Advice involved, there’s more of a preventative element to the work of food clubs. The fact it’s bigger than just giving food away is the real interest we had in it.”

Food clubs also play a key role in tackling social isolation. The rooms at Haughton Green Community Centre are alive with laughter and banter among the volunteers, who hand over the bags of food with a cheerful “here y’are, love”.

“It makes a difference to people socially, that’s one of the things that’s been a real eye-opener to me,” says Martyn Walsh, trustee of the charity that runs the community centre – and also, unexpectedly, bass player in 1990s ‘Madchester’ band Inspiral Carpets. “The members come in and meet people in the queue every week. And it’s the same for some of our volunteers. Like my mum – I lost my dad last year to dementia and now mum’s helping out because she likes the camaraderie, it reminds her of being back at work. This brings people together.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by one of the members outside in the queue, retired council worker Clive Sutcliffe. “It’s brilliant what they’re doing here, and it’s all volunteers who are taking time out to do it. It’s quite a community thing. It gets my wife out of the house, and it’s the same people every week, so we all have a nice half-hour chat before we get the food.”

Nutrition

There’s also a key nutritional element to food clubs. Given that the food is surplus, sourced directly from retailers and suppliers, it’s usually rich in fresh fruit, vegetables and dairy products – which are often lacking in operations that rely on donations from the public, which usually lean much more towards ambient and long-life products such as canned and dried goods.

“Around three-quarters of people accessing food clubs report they’re now eating more fruit and vegetables as well as cooking more balanced meals at home,” says Andrew Forsey, director of Feeding Britain, which supports 400 food clubs across the country. “What’s particularly striking to me is the sight at so many food clubs of children heading straight to the fruit, selecting what they’d like to eat, taking a seat, and tucking straight into it.”

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“I like it because of the variety,” agrees Johnson. “You don’t get the same thing every week. You’re forced to use things. The other week, we had these greens in the bag, and I’ve never seen them in my life. I went home and Googled it and ended up putting them in a leek and potato soup.”

Food clubs also provide relative ease of access compared to food banks, which often require users to “prove” their destitution in order to qualify.

“I understand what’s trying to be achieved by the food banks, but I think, as a model, there’s a lot that’s problematic with it,” says Megan Blake, a senior lecturer and expert in food security and food justice at the University of Sheffield. “The thing with many food banks is that you have to prove failure. And there’s kind of a judgement there, too. Who’s to judge if you’re worthy or unworthy? Why is that somebody’s job? Whereas the food club model is place-based. If you live in that neighbourhood, you don’t need to explain your circumstances. By removing that barrier, it becomes more of a normal place.”

 

24%

Percentage of households with children under four years old experiencing food poverty

^{Source: The Food Foundation}

 

 

 

 None of this, though, is to say that food banks do not perform a crucial function or should be replaced by food clubs entirely. Everyone The Grocer spoke to was clear “there is a need for both”, as Game says. Those that run food clubs, however, report a proportion of food bank members moving over to food club services when they open in their area – 39% stopped or reduced their food bank usage, according to Bread & Butter Thing figures, for example.

Furthermore, in the FSA’s most recent Food and You 2 survey in 2023, it was reported that more people used food clubs than food banks for the first time, despite there being more of the latter in the UK.

“To me, what that suggests is that as a mode of support, it’s one that’s more acceptable to people than the food banks model,” says Blake. “Most people that are food-insecure are not accessing any support, but of the ones that are, food clubs seem to be the option they’re going for if it’s available. That being said, what we need is a multi-pronged approach, not a single solution.”

Number of food clubs

Perhaps unsurprisingly then, food clubs are on the rise. Feeding Britain has worked with “dozens” of food banks to help them either convert into food clubs or add a food club to their existing service. And since 2013 when the first food clubs appeared, Blake estimates there are now about 800 in the UK, most of which have emerged since the pandemic.

But despite high demand, there are barriers to the rollout of food clubs. One is a lack of understanding on the part of the food industry. Blake says that in her dealings with retailers over the years, “some of them ‘get it’ and some of them don’t”. Those employees that work on the sustainability side are, perhaps unsurprisingly, more engaged than, say, those on the operational side, because “for them, it’s all about profit”, she adds.

“I can see why we don’t have the buy-in we’d like,” says Game. “The reason is everything is as lean as it possibly can be within the food industry nowadays. So people don’t have the time to be able to actually manage surplus in the way they maybe could and should. To do this properly does take a bit of time and effort.”

The commercials of it, he says, don’t stack up for the food industry: “Because it’s not something they have to do and it’s not something that adds value. If there was a way of incentivising them through policy, maybe that would encourage them more.”

He points out there are currently “massive” subsidies, circa £750m every year, that go towards funding anaerobic digestion. Yet no such subsidy or incentive exists for redistribution.

One retailer that does ‘get it’ is Morrisons. Unlike most relationships of this nature, The Bread & Butter Thing engages directly with Morrisons’ own distribution centres and manufacturing plants, whereas other retailers work on a more permission basis to take their goods and redistribute it.

Last year alone, the retailer redistributed 10 million meals through The Bread & Butter Thing. “It’s really easy to get involved,” says Morrisons’ Edlin. “You just phone Mark [Game] up, tell him you want to do it, and he’ll throw a team at it that can help you do it really quickly. There are always questions in the early stages about allowing your branded products to go into these things, so you do need a bit of assurance. But it’s not hard to do if you get the right technical people involved.”

Feeding Britain’s Forsey points out that through its Nourish the Nation programme with Comic Relief, Sainsbury’s has also “really grasped the need to support preventative models like food clubs”.

Ruth Cranston, director of corporate responsibility & sustainability at Sainsbury’s, points out that since the start of that programme, The Bread & Butter Thing has distributed over 6.4 million meals, which equates to around 4,000 tonnes of food being redistributed rather than going to waste.

“By channelling our work with Comic Relief to food clubs, we’ve really been able to see the impact we’re driving in the fight against food poverty,” she says. “It’s been brilliant to hear the difference the support is making to people’s day-to-day lives, and we would encourage other retailers to join us.”

Where parts of the food industry are stepping up, politicians are somewhat lagging behind. Game says he’s unsure whether the political will exists to eradicate the dependence on emergency food parcels, such as those handed out at food banks – a Labour manifesto pledge – because “Defra don’t engage with us”. And Blake says there’s “still a lot of confusion about the difference between a food bank and a food club. I think people throw them all in the same basket.”

Forsey agrees that while community-led programmes such as food clubs and advice services have a significant impact, the only way to eliminate hunger and food poverty is for “the government to pull every lever within its reach” to get more money into the pockets of those in need.

He reports that work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall has chaired Feeding Britain’s Feeding Leicester partnership for five years and is now “leading on the government’s manifesto commitment to end the mass dependence on emergency food parcels”.

Scotland and Northern Ireland have both, in their devolved capacities, made it a five-year mission to eradicate food banks, and they’re heavily investing in food clubs and the rise of food clubs, according to Game. “So, it’d be good to see Westminster do the same,” he adds.

A good policy start would be changes to Defra’s food waste hierarchy. Currently, only the bottom half – relating to food waste – is regulated and enforced. The top half, which covers redistribution, is only guidance.

“If they found a way of giving industry more encouragement to redistribute, to move away from anaerobic digestion, I think that would be a really good step. Because that’s the thing with guidance – it doesn’t have any teeth, does it?” Game says.

The environmental element to the whole operation is not lost on the residents of Haughton Green either. As Clive Sutcliffe says: “This place really helps out those who are struggling. It gives them at least 30 quid’s worth of food for £8.50. And because a lot of the stuff is near its sell-by date it stops loads of food getting thrown away too, so it’s a win-win.”