A long table seen from above covered in plates of food: eggs, chips, salad, fruit, pastries and juice.

Food the shops were going to throw away, cooked into a free lunch every Thursday

Anyone can come. No forms, no referral, no questions. Sit down, eat, and take something from the free shelf on your way out.

Come to lunch

Nobody has to prove they are hungry

Some people at the table are struggling. Some are lonely. Some are students who fancy a hot meal, and one is a retired head teacher who comes for the conversation. We don't ask which you are.

The food is surplus, not second-rate: bread from this morning, vegetables with a bruise, yoghurt on its date.

How the food gets to the table

Two volunteers carrying crates away from the back of a small truck on a sunny street.

Collected

Two vans, eleven shops, a bakery and the Saturday market. Every weekday morning.

Two men in masks passing a cardboard box between them in a bright warehouse.

Sorted

Checked, weighed and put in the church hall fridges by whoever is on the rota.

Volunteers in aprons and gloves laying out trays of food in a steel kitchen.

Cooked

Thursday from nine. Two cooks decide the menu when they open the fridges.

Thursday

Lunch, 12 to 2

St Anne's hall. Hot main, soup, pudding, and tea from the urn.

Every day

The free shelf

By the hall door, 9 to 5. Take what you'll use; leave what you won't.

Weekdays

Volunteer

A two-hour shift on a van, in the kitchen or at the door. No experience needed.

Last month, in kilos

Weighed on the same scale every morning. The last line is the one we are trying to shrink.

Collected

4,180 kg

Cooked at lunch

1,420 kg

Taken from the shelf

2,310 kg

Composted anyway

450 kg

Questions people ask

Is it safe to eat?: Yes. Everything is in date or safely past a best-before, kept cold, and cooked by people with food hygiene certificates.

Can I bring my children?: Please do. There are high chairs and a box of crayons, and children eat first.

Allergies: Every dish has a card listing the fourteen allergens. Ask the cooks; they know what went in.

Can my shop give food?: Ring the number below. We collect daily, weigh it, and send you a monthly note of what it became.

A man lifting a crate of produce in a kitchen while two volunteers stand beside him smiling.

Volunteers with lanyards passing tins and jars across a table, laughing.

Plates of food spread across a cloth-covered table, seen from above.