The Independent
Sure enough, a dozen or so people are waiting at the doors of his Sharehouse shop in Sheffield, ahead of opening on the afternoon I turn up. They have come – and will continue to crowd in for the next two hours – for two main reasons.
The first is because the choice of groceries inside this unrefurbished warehouse is phenomenal: crates of fruit and veg, baskets of breads, a deli counter offering pies and pates and pickles, tinned goods and cakes. Lots of cakes. Very occasionally, you can get blast chilled chicken from Nando’s here – “although,” says Smith, “it flies out the door pretty quick”.
The second reason all these customers keep turning up is because of the price for everything in here: “Pay whatever you feel.”
People come in, fill their baskets and then hand over as much or as little money as they want. Some people do weekly shops for a fiver, and that’s fine.
What’s the catch? There is one, of course. Everything here has been salvaged from supermarket bins, restaurant leftovers and wholesale market waste. Edibles otherwise marked for landfill have been saved and piled high. Smith once got called by a food bank with a surplus of donated tins and nowhere to store them. He collected them in his van, stuck them in store and watched them get snapped up.
Local branches of Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and M&S all have his team take their unwanted goods. Today there is an abundance of potatoes here. “Too wonky even for the wonky range,” Smith explains with a shrug.
This, then, is the Real Junk Food Project, an enterprise created by the 32-year-old one-time executive chef with the aim of reducing the UK’s vast quantities of food waste, while helping people struggling – or simply seeking a bargain – in austerity Britain. And it’s proving more popular than he ever imagined.
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Customers at supermarket-style stores pay whatever they want for fruit, veg, bread, tins, cakes and even Nando's chicken – all rescued from going to landfill
Don’t worry about trying to find us, says Adam Smith, founder of a new supermarket-style enterprise whose mission is nothing short of saving the planet: “You’ll see the queue outside.”
Sure enough, a dozen or so people are waiting at the doors of his Sharehouse shop in Sheffield, ahead of opening on the afternoon I turn up. They have come – and will continue to crowd in for the next two hours – for two main reasons.
The first is because the choice of groceries inside this unrefurbished warehouse is phenomenal: crates of fruit and veg, baskets of breads, a deli counter offering pies and pates and pickles, tinned goods and cakes. Lots of cakes. Very occasionally, you can get blast chilled chicken from Nando’s here – “although,” says Smith, “it flies out the door pretty quick”.
The second reason all these customers keep turning up is because of the price for everything in here: “Pay whatever you feel.”
People come in, fill their baskets and then hand over as much or as little money as they want. Some people do weekly shops for a fiver, and that’s fine.
What’s the catch? There is one, of course. Everything here has been salvaged from supermarket bins, restaurant leftovers and wholesale market waste. Edibles otherwise marked for landfill have been saved and piled high. Smith once got called by a food bank with a surplus of donated tins and nowhere to store them. He collected them in his van, stuck them in store and watched them get snapped up.
Local branches of Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and M&S all have his team take their unwanted goods. Today there is an abundance of potatoes here. “Too wonky even for the wonky range,” Smith explains with a shrug.
This, then, is the Real Junk Food Project, an enterprise created by the 32-year-old one-time executive chef with the aim of reducing the UK’s vast quantities of food waste, while helping people struggling – or simply seeking a bargain – in austerity Britain. And it’s proving more popular than he ever imagined.
Read more
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