June Update!

Festivals, Nominations, New Supporters and our Team Grows!

Holy moly, what a busy but incredible month June has been!

We intercepted a whopping 3.5 tonnes of food and household items that would have gone to waste through our work with a number of supermarkets, wholesalers and other food businesses. We catered for a host of fantastic events including Pro-Manchester’s SME Club networking event held at B Works. Our Director Corin Bell had the opportunity to talk to the attendees about the issues of food waste.  B Works is a creative learning space in the heart of Manchester and we are looking forward to working with them again in the future!

We are proud to have continued our work intercepting food waste from festivals in partnership with NCASS, Green Events Company and Eighth Plate. This month we collected 1.5 tonnes from Parklife festival, which included fresh bread and salad. This would not be possible without the support from the festival food vendors who are committed to reducing food waste. We are excited to be collecting from Blue Dot and Kendal Calling in July. Bring it on!

Surplus, our monthly collaborative event with Beer Nouveau was the busiest yet! Over 100 people joined the shenanigans! Our chefs created a variety of street food dishes including slow roast lamb kebab, curry potato burger with a fresh mint relish and parmesan croquettes. These were washed down with Beer Nouveau’s “waste food” beers, which this month included a clementine IPA, pale coffee beer, and a refreshing non-alcoholic mango ice tea. Yum!

Surplus has caught the eye of Manchester’s foodies and has been nominated for a Manchester Food and Drink Award, under the ‘Food Event / Project of the Year’ category! If you think making delicious food and beer whilst reducing food waste is an awesome idea, then give us a vote here.

Our work with local community organisations is made possible through our events and catering service. Last month we continued our weekly redistribution of food and household items to a number of organisations helping people in crisis. We also cooked a massive curry for the awesome Coffee4Craig who work tirelessly to help people experiencing street homelessness in the city. We also catered the 2019 Refugee World Cup hosted by The British Red Cross, Manchester Refugee Support Network and a number of local refugee organisations. We had a fantastic day and served over 600 people! All this would not be possible without the support of our lovely catering customers. We’re grateful to each and everyone of you!

Our social enterprise continues to grow and this June, it was time to expand our family! We have welcomed to the team General Manager Sarah, new Front of House team member Helen,  and part-time Kitchen Porters Sonny and Mark! They are all a fantastic bunch of people and we are so happy to be working with them!

Here is to another great month feeding bellies not bins!