Fill Yer Boots Cafe

Surplus Food Breakfast
For families at Uppingham C of E Primary School
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  This project sprouted from a conversation between three like-minded friends… we call ourselves “Thinkers and Doers”. 
In Winter 2016, there was a lot of negative press about how much food is wasted in our supermarkets at the end of every day. We were also aware of a local report written by Citizen’s Advice Bureau, titled Poverty In Rutland. This demonstrated that even though Rutland is seen as a wealthy county that there was actually 10% child poverty in Uppingham.
 
We came up with an idea to create a surplus food breakfast café for families at Uppingham C of E Primary School. Intercepting this surplus food from supermarkets and using it to provide breakfast in a school would greatly benefit local children. The Headteacher was very supportive of our ideas, so we ran a trial week in May 2017. 
 
We crowd-funded the pilot week by approaching local businesses in Uppingham. We linked with Tesco to provide us with the surplus food, and the three of us planned to cook, clean and serve. That week we started with about 20 and ended with over 100 breakfasts served. 
 
Following this pilot success, we applied to One Stop to fund a café twice a week starting in September 2017. We later recruited Shirley, a parent who is a chef, to make yummy breakfast meals for families before the school day begins. 

Now in our 3rd year, we intercept surplus food from Tesco, Aldi and Lidl every week and provide breakfast for over half of the school community each week.  Thank you to the COOP Community Fund and the residents of Uppingham, who have secured the running of this project for at least another 2 years to 2021.
 
We are grateful to Uppingham Town Council, Uppingham Parish Church and the COOP Community Fund,  who were also instrumental in funding this project.