FareShare – Turning Food Waste into a Lifeline.

I was delighted to finally visit the Fareshare facility in Guildford with Suzanne on Friday July 4^th and meet with Dan Slatter (Chief Executive) and Suzie Maine (Vice-Chair). As Chair of Guildford Philanthropy, I had been aware of the long search Fareshare had to find suitable accommodation from which to deliver food supplies to charities in the Guildford area. The warehouse space together with two vans enables them to provide this vital service. Some 85% of the food supplies they receive comes from relationships the national office has with large food chains and the balance comes from local food companies and donations from customers at local supermarkets. They encourage charities seeking food donation to sign up and they provide supplies based on weight, with the charities paying 20-30p per kilogram for whatever is available that particular week; a massive discount on both wholesale and retail prices. They are also very keen that as little food that they receive as possible is wasted, and currently less than 2% of what they receive ends up not fit for human consumption. To achieve this in some cases they will engage a local company to turn any surplus raw produce (such as tomatoes or cauliflowers) into tinned soup. 

It was great to see them up and running in Guildford and providing such a sadly necessary service to the local community.