October 30, 2018, by The Ingenuity Lab

Tackling Poverty in Nottingham through Food Waste

Ingenuity19 is looking for the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators to create scalable social and commercial enterprises that can transform Nottingham, the UK and beyond.

We are looking for students, staff, graduates and early career researchers from across the University of Nottingham to come together and discover problems worth solving, and offer you the tools to create scalable sustainable solutions.

The proportion of children in relative low income is expected to increase sharply from 30% in 2015/16 to 37% in 2021/22 based on incomes after housing costs, or from 20% to 27% based on incomes before housing costs. Today, we sat down with Foodprint, a social supermarket that redistributes surplus food locally, sustainably and affordably.

Tell us a bit about what you do…

Foodprint’s store opened its doors in December 2017 in Sneinton, an area particularly susceptible to food poverty in Nottingham. By acting as a central hub we reduce food waste in our community through collecting surplus food from local supermarkets such as Hovis Bakery and Tesco, and redistribute it to our 13 partners. These include a range of foodbanks such as Tasty Tuesdays and the Greenway Centre. On top of this we also distribute our surplus food to local schools who use our food to hold breakfast clubs for their students. We then bring the rest of the surplus food back to our store in Sneinton, which is open Friday to Monday, where we price it at approximately 50% of the original price.

What’s different about Foodprint?

Through selling food in our store, it means we operate differently to foodbanks who rely on charitable funding to give out free food, whereas we can gain financial independence and stability through selling surplus food. Via Foodprints operations we are currently collecting roughly 400-450kg of food per week, 300kg of that is redistributed to our partners and 100kg gets sold in our store.

Additionally, we are providing cheaper and more affordable food to around 80-90 people in Sneinton through the store. By working with local schools and their breakfast clubs we are able to feed 80 children and down to our redistribution network we are providing food to around 300 people in our local community, Nottingham.

Any tips for somebody looking to set up a social enterprise?

Advice we would provide to those looking to set up a social enterprise is to focus on the 6 P’s: People, Place, Project, Plan, Partners and Perseverance. They may act as separate entities as you read through them but they all interlink and will help you to create the most impact you can through your idea!

Foodprint are currently looking for volunteers to train and help run our store! Please check out our website https://www.foodprint.io/ if you’re interested in signing up to our volunteers list! Also, if you would like to hear more about Foodprint, the Project Manager, Lee Taylor, is giving a talk on Foodprint and sustainable social enterprises on the 23^rd October at the University of Nottingham, Trent Building Room LG18 at 6pm. Hopefully we shall see you there!

Official Ingenuity 19 applications will be open in November.

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