Waste Not Café

We run a regular pop-up vegetarian and vegan social eating cafe at Chesterfield Baptist Church. The aims of the project are to create community cohesion, whilst tackling food waste and food poverty. Our monthly meals are available for a minimum suggested donation of £2.50 adults, £1.50 kids. Any food we haven’t been able to use in cooking will also be available to be taken away for a donation.

Social eating is all about bringing people together, eating food together. Meeting and talking to people you wouldn’t normally talk to. Creating conversations, friendships and relationships. Social eating can help tackle isolation and loneliness.

We cook up a 3 course meal using surplus food, given to us by the charity Fareshare East Midlands. Surplus food is food that if we didn’t take it, it would end up in the bin / landfill. 1.9 million tonnes of food is wasted by the food industry every year in the UK. 250,000 tonnes of the food that goes to waste each year is still edible. That’s enough for 650 million meals.

We give any of our profits leftover to Chesterfield foodbanks. We believe it is not right that people are having to rely on foodbanks when supermarkets are throwing away so much food. 8.4 million people in the UK are struggling to afford to eat. In Chesterfield last year over 3000 adults and over 1000 children in crisis were given three-day emergency food supplies.