On 8 January the SE Branch organised a half-day volunteering shift at The Felix Project. This is a charity that re-distributes surplus food; they are the within-London partner for the national charity Fairshare. Their redistribution includes using donated food as ingredients for 4,500 – 5,000 chilled ready-meals every day for next-day distribution via local schools, charities and community hubs.
Even for those of our IFST team who had been aware of the Felix Project, the scale and efficiency of their operations was eye-opening. Their raw materials are far from scraps and leftovers – they are bulk quantities of quality ingredients – but their chefs must design bespoke scaled recipes daily from the ingredients to hand. It is the industrial equivalent of Ready, Steady, Cook. As volunteers, our onboarding and induction training was seamless and we were soon working on the ready meal filling and labelling line, hand-filling cartons of rice and curry. The atmosphere was sociable and fun but professionally focussed. We filled three batches within our shift, plus cleaning down the filling room. They told us that the day’s total was 5,400 ready meals, their 4th highest on record, which we will take as testament to our food industry expertise! It is just sobering that – however many meals they distribute – demand is always higher.
Felix Shaw was a schoolboy anxious to help others when he discovered an opposition football team with players unable to afford to eat before the match. His father founded The Felix Project after Felix’s death from meningitis in 2014. The charity is reliant on volunteers, both groups and individuals, and – unusually, in the food sector – is geared to make good use of ad-hoc and 1-off volunteers. Based on our experience, we would highly recommend it.