Supporting the delivery of food to those in need

The University of Manchester’s catering team is providing an industrial kitchen to help local charities create nutritious meals for those at most in need across the city.

During what is being termed the greatest public health and economic challenge in living memory, local authorities and charities are finding there is an ever growing demand for food, from families or individuals in need, from those self-isolating to people struggling with poverty or redundancy.

The catering team at The University of Manchester are supporting two local organisations to contribute to supporting those in need. 

Catering team helping make and deliver food to those in need.

Re-purposing resources

Fareshare Greater Manchester is a network that takes good quality surplus food to more than 230 charities across Greater Manchester.  

With on-campus food and hospitality currently suspended, catering vans normally used for making on-site catering deliveries have been made available for collecting surplus food from Fareshare to be delivered to a second social enterprise Cracking Good Food. Based in south Manchester, Cracking Good Food uses food donations from local schools and retailers to create nutritious meals for those in need. Cracking Good Food usually works in domestic kitchens but due to the scale of response necessary to support those in need in the COVID-19 pandemic, the team needed an industrial kitchen to produce more than 1,000 meals a day.

This is where The University of Manchester stepped in, supplying Cracking Good Food with a kitchen, based in student residences, to utilise for their needs. This allowed Cracking Good Food to continue providing food to those who need it, increasing their produce from 200 meals a day, to 1,000. 

Supporting our local charities

Alison Shedlock, Head of Hospitality and Events, said: “We’re delighted to be able to help our city in this way. We’re doing what we can to make our kitchens and vans available to help deliver food to those in need.”

Cracking Good Food has launched a fundraising appeal to support vulnerable communities impacted by the global coronavirus crisis. Fareshare are continuing a full national operation to get food to vulnerable people and are looking for support.

Social responsibility is one of our three core strategic goals in our Manchester 2020 strategy, sitting equally alongside our commitments to world-class research and outstanding learning and student experience. Social responsibility describes the way we're making a difference to the social and environmental wellbeing of our communities through our teaching, research and public events and activities.

Hear from the catering team

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