The People’s Kitchen

One of the ambitions of The People’s Supermarket is the reduction of food waste     generated by the store and subsequently taken to landfill. Not only does it make good environmental sense to reduce the amount thrown away, it also has sound commercial logic, as less waste equals more profit. In September 2010, the store acquired a complete ex-demonstration domestic kitchen. Included in the donation were appliances, work surfaces, cupboards and some cutlery and crockery. The kitchen was installed on the sales floor at the rear of the store; with the objective to create healthy, nutritious ready meals for customers buy and eat at home. All the ingredients come from the range sold in the store and where possible from items that have reached their sell-by date or are past their best. From day one, the kitchen has been a huge success –

-    Commercially it has generated additional sales per week, from soups, salads, sandwiches and ready to eat dinners.
o    The demand for The People’s Kitchen products is so high that we cannot satisfy it and we sell out on a daily basis.
-    Environmentally on average 100kgs of waste per week are processed through the kitchen. o    What is not used in the kitchen is sent to compost at a local garden project. o    The store no longer generates enough waste to satisfy demand for The People’s Food so it
now takes in additional products from its fruit & vegetable supplier.

-    Socially we have created four jobs; our chefs, who were all previously unemployed, work Monday
to Saturday.

o    Our members are gaining life skills through direct hands on working in the kitchen,
including food hygiene training, cookery lessons and teamwork.

o    None of our homemade food contains unhealthy preservatives, colourings, or excessive sugar.

We have received several enquires to provide local businesses and corporations with food. We currently supply prepared food for external catering events on an ad hoc basis; over past few months this amounted to breakfast for 120 people, 100 salads, 500 sandwiches, 60 hot lunches and 2 private functions. All of these were competitively priced and repeat orders have already been received. However the pressure on the current kitchen has been tremendous and continues to represent a challenge to the provision of food for the lunchtime and evening trade.