How one UK community is fighting food poverty

When Lara Yusuff was furloughed in March, she joined a local food pantry to access affordable healthy food to feed her family. “The pantry has really helped me out in a time of need. I get food at a discounted rate which saves me a lot of money,” she says. Lara, who has two sons aged 12 and eight, is a member of Peckham Pantry in south east London, where every Wednesday she pays a membership fee of £4.50 (€5) to choose from fresh foods at a value of around £15. On her last visit she got cereal, fruit – to make smoothies – noodles, onions, apple cider and a mix of vegetables, as well as chicken, beef and rice on another visit.

Peckham Pantry is located in one of London’s most ethnically diverse neighbourhoods. It’s an area that has been hit hard by Covid-19, with the UK Office for National Statistics reporting that it has had more deaths than any central London borough and, as has happened across the UK, its residents have been furloughed in large numbers. At the same time the UK government wants people to get healthy to fight off the virus, with England’s deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries urging people to lose weight. Yet Peckham residents are now living with less money, and need access to affordable healthy food like never before.

“The £4.50 is a membership fee. We are not charging them for the food,” Temitope Okudiyal, who manages the pantry, explains. The pantry, which is based at St. Luke’s Church, pools all its membership fees together to purchase food in bulk. The majority of supplies come from the charity Fairshare, a UK charity that redistributes surplus food, as well as from farmers and wholesalers who have excess produce. Fees can also be used to plug holes in food supply, the goal being that members can cook whole family meals and pay for its running costs. “We want the pantry to pay for itself,” she says.

Choice is key at the pantry. Unlike at a food bank, where people are given a parcel of whatever long-life, mostly tinned emergency food is available, at the pantry members pay money for the food they actually want. In Peckham’s vibrantly mixed community over 50% of residents identify as black, Caribbean or African, according to the 2011 census, and for that reason Temitope is trying to source more African and Caribbean food for members to choose from.

The pantry is a place where members can access affordable healthy food and make their shopping bills stretch further. Currently there are 340 members and the pantry sees roughly 60 visits every week, choosing from a variety of fresh fruits, vegetables, eggs, meats and cheeses, as well as branded cupboard items. But really, anyone can become a member and being on a low income isn’t a requirement. “It could just mean you like a bargain,” says Chris Price who is CEO of Pecan, the Peckham-based community development charity that runs the pantry.

Pecan, which also runs the local food bank, Southwark Foodbank, launched Peckham Pantry in April 2019 following a model designed by Stockport Homes housing association, which make all the materials needed to start a franchise – such as software, manuals, aprons and fridges – easily available to anyone. The model is rolled out nationally by the charity Church Action on Poverty and there now are 18 pantries around the UK. “We insist on chilled seasonal food because we feel it dignifies the transaction,” Gillian Oliver at Church Action on Poverty says. Pecan liked the idea of this model and was specifically looking for a way to help local people recover from a financial crisis. “A food bank is an emergency option. We don’t want people to become reliant on free food because that takes away from aspiration,” Chris says.

Yet Southwark Foodbank has seen a significant increase in people referred to them since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2019 it had 6,500 referrals for an emergency food parcel from healthcare and social care workers, their busiest year to date, but already in the first three months of 2020 that same number of people have been referred – an annualised increase of 300%. The Trussell Trust, a UK-wide charity supporting 1,200 food bank centres, has reported that the number of families with children being referred to food banks has almost doubled compared to this time last year. And according to the Food Foundation, 8% of households in the UK have had to borrow money or go into debt because of the Covid-19 crisis.

“If you want to adjust your budget so that you have enough food to eat, you have to buy unhealthy food because it’s the cheapest option,” Chris says. At Peckham Pantry they’ve made it a priority to only stock healthy foods. Members are urged to choose fruits and vegetables over junk food. “If you like chocolate, like me, you’re not going to get it at the pantry,” he says, and nor will you see crisps or fizzy drinks. The food stocked at the pantry is healthy, with a variety of fruits and vegetables changing with the seasons to keep members interested. 

Fecundo Mendia likes Peckham Pantry for that reason. He’s not working at the moment and has been struggling to feed his family. He has three girls aged 15, 12 and ten. “I would pay £20 for what I can get for £4.50 at the pantry. It’s not enough, for a family of five, but you can get a couple of family meals out if it,” he says. On his last visit he chose rice, milk, cooking sauces, bread, pasta, avocados and eggs. 

Chris Pratt would agree. He can get a couple of evening meals out of what he gets at the pantry, but still supplements his weekly food shop with visits to the supermarket. At the pantry he likes to get ham, milk, marmite, basmati rice, tea and fruit. “It keeps my food bills down. Every little bit helps us,” he says.

But Peckham Pantry wants to do more. It has now secured funding to open six days a week, including some evenings, and will take over three shops. “We feel the demand has increased. We are buying more food and preparing. It will be good for our members who can’t come during the day on Wednesdays because they have to work or have appointments,” Temitope says.

Yet providing affordable healthy food is not the only thing Peckham Pantry wants to achieve. The vision is for the pantry to be a place where friendships develop over weeks, months and hopefully years. Before the Covid-19 lockdown members chatted over cups of coffee at the church’s café while waiting to shop. Children played together in the hall. Since lockdown, these same people have helped each other; they’ve organised food deliveries, picked up pharmacy prescriptions for their vulnerable friends and have done their best to keep this close-knit community together.

“This isn’t about food poverty. That doesn’t exist in London. There’s plenty of food to go around. This is about people who don’t have enough money to buy that food. It’s also about creating a community. That’s so much more valuable than giving people food, because when you have community, you can find routes out of poverty,” Chris says.