4 June 2025
“All this is new to us. It all started off by me saying let’s not waste food, and boom – it’s just exploded into a community, and we watched it happen,” says Marion Lewis from SAX Community Fridge (SAXCF).
It all started with a simple idea; prior to her retirement, Marion saw an article about community fridges and, inspired by the idea of strangers sharing food to avoid food waste, the SAXCF was launched.
Situated in the market town of Saxmundham, East Suffolk, SAXCF launched in March 2021 to help reduce food waste in the area. Marion, along with a small team of like-minded locals, joined forces to develop the fridge and the project has expanded over the years into its own community, supporting local people with food and much more.
After coming across Hubbub, the environmental charity that supports a community fridge network across the UK, the SAXCF team worked with another local charity, The Good Neighbour Scheme, to set up their own community fridge.
“They wanted people to come with ideas for a community project,” explains Marion. “So, I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to get a team together’. This is pre COVID, I went to them and said, ‘Why don’t we do a community fridge?’ They thought it was a great idea, but it didn’t work, it just never got off the ground.
“The Good Neighbour Scheme wanted to move much more into pantries and food poverty, but I wanted the community fridge to be for everybody.”
Despite a rocky beginning, Marion persevered and with the support a team of volunteers, the community fridge relaunched in a pub car park.
Marion continues: “We closed down sadly on the Monday, but by the Friday I was up and running again with a lot of volunteers, who by that time were quite different because, over a year, lots of people who’d come to the fridge wanted to be part of the volunteer team.
“We actually function as an ambient food space outdoor, no matter what the weather is. Very, very rarely we go into the church hall or into the Old Bank, which we’re offered if there isn’t an exhibition on. We’re in a pub car park now in the High Street and the location is everything.”
Since re-launching in the pub car park, SAXCF has been reaching more and more people, from those who have been attending regularly, to people passing by popping in to see what’s going on.
“We’ve been up and running in the car park for just over two years now,” Marion tells us. “Fridays are really busy, and we get about 60 people through. We want people to be welcomed and accepted. Now in our third year, our focus is on generosity.
“The community, including local businesses, really support us. We have our regulars who come for the surplus food that is on offer each session, but we have some people who just come for the company. If people are in food poverty, it takes away the embarrassment and all the anxiety because we’re outdoors and it’s accessible, visible but more importantly everyone is welcome to take from the table if they can use what they take.
“We get so many people just wandering in off the high streets asking what’s going on. We offer them a sweet and encourage them to stay and have a coffee. The welcome is very important, so we have a welcome desk with local leaflets. We’re about building relationships.”
While the core goal of SAXCF is to share surplus food with the community, what has developed has become so much more than that. With everything finally in place, SAXCF has blossomed into the wide-reaching community project it is today, not only offering food, but a place to seek advice and, crucially, friendship.
“Our growing community is just as important to us now as saving items from a waste bin,” says Marion. “We are all becoming increasingly aware how debilitating loneliness can be, and therefore how important these regular drop-in sessions can be so helpful to all of us.
“The thing that’s really important is the people. Two out of three usually stay and they have a free drink. The coffee is kindly provided on a Monday by the local lovely hotel and, on a Friday, by an artisan bakery. It’s lovely to offer our visitors real coffee. You never know who’s going to walk in with a homemade cake. Often the bananas that are donated from Tesco’s and Waitrose are taken and baked into a cake for everyone to enjoy the following week.
“Over coffee, it seems that our visitors are all becoming good friends and helping each other during the week. A statistic that has stuck with us is that, if you can meet with somebody for even just one hour a week, that makes a huge difference to a person’s wellbeing. And it all started with me provisionally booking a couple of sessions with FareShare Go.”
Volunteers are vital to making things run smoothly at SAXCF collecting food through FareShare Go, serving up refreshments and supporting the community.
“We’ve got over 30 volunteers,” Marion explains “We need 10-12 at each session. We need three to four organising the community table, we have a couple of people serving the tea and the coffee and another one or two cutting up the cake. Then we have two or three people on the welcome desk chatting to people, seeing if they need sign posting. We also have other volunteers who pickup the donations from the supermarkets, bakeries etc. We even have a couple of primary school-age children who help welcome our visitors. One of these is home-schooled and SAXCF is a way for her to gain social and confidence skills.
“It’s been wonderful, we have never had a problem recruiting and retaining volunteers. We’re just so fortunate. We show our appreciation to them by organising a summer garden party and, of course, a Christmas do. Some of the volunteers have become a real friendship group and they go off for lunch together they call themselves “Ladies Who Lunch”.
“On the other hand we have other volunteers who are struggling with mental health issues. “ One of them has said that it’s made a big difference to him to be part of the team . We show we value and trust him to do things, we ask his opinion and are extremely fortunate because he is able to help us with the session setup and collections. He just wants to be doing something useful. When he had a bit of a problem a couple of weeks ago, he was touched by how supportive everybody was towards him.
“We also have a 9-year-old home-schooled child who volunteers at our sessions to help with her socialising and confidence. It’s lovely to see her giving out sweets to all the visitors and dog biscuits to their dogs!
SAXCF is keen to assure people in the community that they’re there for everybody. There are no requirements for people to attend; anyone is welcome to pay them a visit, pick up surplus food, and stop and chat for a while with their neighbours.
“We are for anybody,” Marion emphasises. “I love it because everybody’s in the same space.
“To encourage people to take the food on offer on the table, we can say ‘this food was destined for the waste bin. It’s open to anybody.’ But there’s still people thinking we’re a food bank and saying ‘I’m not taking it. I don’t need it.’ But if you can use it, it’s got to go and very, very rarely do we ever throw anything away as we usually can compost it.
“We have good contacts with the community co-ordinator at the local GP surgery. They recognise us as a safe, welcoming place for their patients to visit.
“We’re recognised as a place where a cross-section of the community is meeting twice a week. We have strong links with the Art Station, which is a local arts charity. They started a free camera club called Photo Shed. They assemble in our car park where we offer them free coffee and cake. It’s one community group hosting another and some excellent contacts have resulted from this. They discuss photography and then go around town taking shots relevant to that week’s topic. They get about 20 people each time.
“We hope to be involved with other Art Station projects this coming year to do with cookery and food education.
Every week, the SAXCF team collect surplus food from their local Tesco and Waitrose, via the FareShare Go programme, which is then offered to people in the pub car park.
The random nature of this surplus food means that sometimes SAXCF receives huge amounts of one specific food item. In these cases they try to provide recipe cards. For example, if they receive a lot of bananas, they also share a recipe for banana bread and often some arrives the following session.
“We’ve made it a priority to build relationships with the two managers at Tesco and Waitrose. They’re both very supportive and positive towards the project. They both support our annual volunteer thank-you event.
“We mostly receive bread products. We do receive some fruit and veg and flowers. The joy on people’s face when they are offered flowers is wonderful.
“We have seen a large increase in the number of people reached by the project. Tesco asked if we could take on an extra evening collection – long story short, this has resulted in our being able to give a weekly donation to a toddler group, two local nurseries, and an early Wednesday morning pop-up community fridge at Saxmundham Primary School. This means we are reaching a wider range of ages, not just those able to visit us at 10:30am on Monday and Friday, especially young families.”
Christmas week saw the first SAXCF “Flash Fridge”! This resulted from a large donation from the supermarkets late on Christmas Eve. 18 people were able to come to the church hall following a Facebook announcement. In addition, these people were able to give food to their friends and neighbours. We loved the FareShare email informing us of the amount of food we had saved, but in terms of the weight of a reindeer! We used this as a visual on some fliers.
SAXCF has had several positive feedback comments, such as:
“I’d like to let you know how impressive the work you’re doing is, and how I’m regularly namechecking yourselves as an example of great practice. Please keep it up and I’m sure we’ll be back in contact again soon!”
Andy Joliffe, East Suffolk Council Communities Officer
“We would like to extend our sincere thanks to Saxmundham Community Fridge for their invaluable support at Sax Arts Fest 2024. The Sax Community Fridge team are doing vital work in our community by reducing food waste and offering tea, coffee and homemade cakes for all to enjoy, twice weekly in the Queen’s Head Car Park on the High Street.”
Art Station
“Thank you so much for the gift of flowers at the Community Fridge. I never buy them for myself and they really make me smile!”
Young mum visitor
“I massively respect what you guys are doing and if I can help you in anyway then please say.”
Maple Farm
Marion concluded: “The key thing is that, without FareShare, none of this would have happened.”
