FareShare is the UK’s leading food redistribution charity, harnessing the power of food to change lives. We were born out of the belief that no good food should go to waste. This belief is as central to our work now as it was 30 years ago.
Homeless charity Crisis establish Crisis FareShare, co-founded with Sainsbury’s. The first depot opens in London and during the next 10 years Crisis FareShare expands by opening Regional Centres across the UK, including Brighton and Edinburgh, using a social franchise model.
FareShare becomes an independent charity in order to support its growth and broaden its remit, meaning more people experiencing food poverty (beyond homeless people) can benefit. FareShare London is launched with four more Regional Centres in operation in South Yorkshire, Dundee, Edinburgh and Brighton.
Launch of the current FareShare logo, the apple shaped as a hand.
FareShare launches it social business arm to generate income from pallet fees charged to the food industry. New Regional Centres are established in Birmingham and Bristol.
FareShare becomes a strategic partner of the Food and Drink Federation and new Regional Centres open in Aberdeen, Newcastle, Leicester and Manchester.
The 10,000 pallet challenge is launched with the aim of increasing the levels of food supplied to FareShare by the food industry. FareShare takes part in ‘Feeding the 5,000’ an event highlighting the scandal of food waste.
FareShare wins ‘Britain’s Most Admired Charity’ award and, in partnership with Sainsbury’s, runs the UK’s biggest food drive – the Million Meal Appeal. The campaign wins IGD’s Third Sector Business Charity award. New Regional Centres open in Liverpool, Wales and Belfast.
Tesco run a national food collection with FareShare and the Trussell Trust and collect enough food for 2 million meals.
FareShare reaches the significant milestone of supplying surplus food to over 1,000 charities.
FareShare opens new Regional Centres in Kent, Thames Valley and Southern Central.
With the opening of FareShare Lancashire and Cumbria, there are now 20 FareShare Regional Centres. FareShare Go launches, a digital platform linking charities with local stores which have unsold food left at the end of the day.
FareShare Go adds nearly 3,000 tonnes of surplus food to the more than 10,000 tonnes already distributed by FareShare regional centres. Research shows that the value of the food to the charities and community groups we support has risen to £19.6 million.
The opening of FareShare East Anglia brings the number of Regional Centres up to 21 and brings FareShare’s work to a whole new area of the UK. FareShare wins Charity of the Year at the Third Sector and the Charity Times awards.
In February 2018, FareShare partners with Asda and anti-poverty charity The Trussell Trust to launch the Fight Hunger, Create Change programme, to get fresh fruit and vegetables into The Trussell Trust’s network of foodbanks, so they can increase the nutritional value of their food parcels.
In 2018, FareShare launches the ‘Feed People First’ campaign, in partnership with The Grocer. Its aim is to ensure it doesn’t cost companies more to send their edible surplus to good causes that it does to send it to landfill, animal feed or anaerobic digestion. In October 2018 Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, announces that a £15m fund will be made available to offset the cost of diverting surplus food within the supply chain to charities.
2019 marks FareShare’s 25 year anniversary of fighting hunger and food waste. The biggest charitable operation of its kind in the UK, in the 25 years since launching FareShare has provided food equivalent to 236.8 million meals – all provided to people in need via our network of frontline charities, and worth £179.9 million in costs avoided by the voluntary sector if they bought the same food and drink.
June saw the launch of FareShare’s Surplus with Purpose Fund, a new £3m fund which offsets the additional costs faced by the food industry for diverting surplus food to charities. Following the success of FareShare’s #FeedPeopleFirst campaign, DEFRA provided a grant of £1.9 million towards the fund, as part of their £15 million scheme to help organisations across England overcome barriers to get surplus food onto people’s plates.
Covid-19 causes a worldwide crisis with millions of deaths and massive disruption and change. During the following long periods of lockdown, people lose their jobs, their homes and tragically, thousands of family members, while the need for food is never greater, particularly with soaring unemployment.
FareShare delivers a near fourfold increase in its weekly volumes, from providing food for 930,000 meals a week to a peak of 3.5 million meals a week at the height of the pandemic.
This is achieved through huge donations of food and surplus food from more than 40 food companies, in particular Tesco (£7.5m), the Co-op (£1.5m), Asda and Compass Group (£500,000); and Sainsbury’s donated £3m to cover the costs of handling and transporting this food. FareShare also bought food with £10.5m funding provided by Defra, £2.1m from the Scottish Government and £0.5m by the Welsh Assembly Government to redistribute food to organisations providing frontline food support.
The investment from Asda through their “Fight Hunger, Create Change” campaign enables FareShare regional centres to almost double their capacity with more chillers, vans, larger warehouses and funding an expansion into Milton Keynes and the South West of England. FareShare also increases its senior management via a National Lottery Community Fund grant.
Manchester United and England footballer Marcus Rashford, becomes a FareShare Ambassador.
The second wave of COVID-19 comes to an end in April 2021, followed by the new Omicron variant towards the end of the year. The fuel crisis and the HGV driver shortage also push up costs and present logistical challenges for moving food around the country. Brexit continues to disrupt cross-border sourcing of food in Northern Ireland.
Despite this, the FareShare network again works at a much larger scale with five times the food volumes of 2019, equivalent to 128.3 million meals, to help feed one million vulnerable people in the UK through its 9,462 charity partners and community group network.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 worsens the global food crisis, interrupting supply chains and creating a scarcity of some foods and increasing the costs of others.
A FareShare survey, #RunningOnEmpty, shows that 90% of charities and community groups say their services have been affected in some way by the cost of living crisis.
Inflation is now at its highest level for 30 years and supermarket prices are the highest they have been in a decade. Nearly seven million people, including two million children, are going hungry in the UK.
In November FareShare launches the Cost of Living Crisis Appeal, calling on the government to invest £25 million a year in surplus food redistribution, to make it cost neutral for farmers to pick, package and transport their unsold surplus food to charity, rather than wasting it.
In May FareShare and Tesco win the Long Term Partnership category at the Third Sector Charity Business Awards. The two organisations have worked together since 2012 to help alleviate poverty in the UK by ensuring surplus food within the Tesco supply chain is used to feed people and doesn’t end up as waste. This follows the September 2022 win by FareShare and Tesco in the Charity Times’ Corporate National Partnership with a Retailer category.
A new FareShare and University of Hertfordshire report into the social impact of food is released in May, showing that the Government saves nearly £118 million a year by getting nutritious, edible food to charities rather than letting it go to waste. This means every £1 spent on getting food to people, not waste, could save the State £2.97.
Homeless charity Crisis founded FareShare with Sainsbury’s.
Volunteer Phil ready to deliver food at the launch of FareShare West Midlands.
FareShare takes part in Feeding the 5,000 in Trafalgar Square 2009.
A volunteer from a charity Ace of Clubs collects surplus bananas from a Tesco store. The bananas have been donated through the FareShare FoodCloud.
FoodHero volunteers at FareShare, ensuring no meal goes to waste!
Primary school kids eating at a table in school cafeteria
Warehouse Freezer Room FareShare Manchester
Warehouse Volunteer Kristian FareShare Manchester
FareShare Vans Yard
