Wholesalers join forces to donate meals to those in need

Fresh Direct and Wild Harvest join with Brakes’ London depot to create a new strategic partnership with leading emergency food charity City Harvest to provide surplus food to vulnerable groups

As families struggle with the cost-of-living crisis, City Harvest has seen a dramatic increase in demand with one in four Londoners facing food insecurity.

The new partnership will see City Harvest collect from Fresh Direct and Wild Harvest’s Dagenham depot twice a week, in addition to weekly collections from Brakes’ site in Park Royal, helping charities including Shepherd’s Bush Families Project and The Soup Kitchen London. It is anticipated that food donated by Fresh Direct and Wild Harvest, which are part of Sysco GB, will provide around 200,000 meals every year while saving approximately 330 tonnes of carbon.

Sysco GB Sustainability Manager, Emily Pinkney, said: “It’s fantastic to work with an organisation like City Harvest to ensure surplus food goes to support people who really need it. Our goal is to minimise food waste through every stage of our operations, but sometimes it’s unavoidable, and this partnership will help ensure that it’s not wasted. Working with City Harvest is so easy, we recommend them to other companies as a sustainable solution to surplus food.”

Sarah Calcutt, CEO at City Harvest added: “City Harvest loves working with sustainable companies like Sysco to co-create maximum positive social impact. Our partnership with Sysco ensures no good food is wasted and people facing extreme hardship will be able to feed their families. Across Wild Harvest, Brakes and Fresh Direct, we source an extensive range of fresh quality food and ingredients that our charities will use to promote health and wellbeing to vulnerable people in this tough economic climate.”

Brakes charity City Harvest cost of living crisis Emily Pinkney Fresh Direct Sarah Calcutt Sysco Wild Harvest