Mammoth effort to meet spiralling demand as food poverty in Bristol soars

Volunteers in bright yellow tabards are carefully packing items into unlabeled cardboard boxes at the end of a vast warehouse on Winterstoke Road.

Each of the packages will be loaded onto vans and distributed to organisations across Bristol, where they will be passed on to families who are struggling to make ends meet.

Overseeing the morning’s operations is Cassandra Frey-Mills, who works for Kambe Events and would normally be found in a field coordinating things behind the scenes at Shambala festival. With the Covid-19 outbreak bringing all events to a standstill, she and her team are turning their skills to help meet the pressing need to tackle food poverty in the city.

Patterned wallpaper and the odd faded sign on the walls hint at the former use of the warehouse, which was a bed showroom that stood empty for several years before FareShare South West quickly brought it back into use in the summer to fulfil a desperate need for space to store and distribute vital supplies.

In the past month, there has been almost three and a half times the amount of food distributed than for the same period last year. Since March, the charity has gone from providing enough for one million meals to nearly 3.5 million meals as the impact of the pandemic and resulting hardship hits home.

The head of food at FareShare South West has said the charity is set to break the record for the most food it has ever distributed within a week.

And head of operations Simon Jarvis says he is only expecting to see the level of need rise, with January traditionally a tough month for many anyway, exacerbated by the ongoing impact of Covid-19 on jobs and livelihoods.

It was the campaign by Marcus Rashford, who starkly highlighted the reality of food poverty this year, that inspired new volunteer Ricky Williams to lend a hand.

Placing a sticker book for children at the top of a box before closing the lid, he says that he has been out of work since taking time off to look after his son and wanted to do something productive.

“Having a young son, I could not help but picture him in that situation and I just wanted to do something to help,” Ricky tells Bristol24/7.

Ricky Williams was inspired by Marcus Rashford to volunteer for Fareshare South West

FareShare South West is at the forefront of a mammoth citywide effort to ensure nobody goes hungry and launched Foodstock 2020 in October, a campaign to build a stockpile of emergency food and the infrastructure to deliver it over a difficult winter.

It has taken the help of many to successfully scale up the charity’s operations, with Ashton Gate initially used as an emergency food storage and packing area when the pandemic hit before the Steve Lansdown, the co-founder of Hargreaves Lansdown and the owner of Bristol Sport, loaned the disused warehouse on Winterstoke Road to FareShare.

This is used in addition to the charity’s premises in St Jude’s, where more fresh produce and chilled items are stocked.

Reflecting on the colossal efforts so far, Simon says it is bittersweet to see the city unite to tackle food poverty, which shouldn’t exist in the UK in 2020.

Looking over at volunteers busily working on a production line of boxes – unbranded because of the stigma still associated with receiving food – the head of operations, who started out as a volunteer, says people have rallied to help as infrastructure had to quickly be put in place in the building and distribution logistics organised.

Volunteer Nate puts together a box ready to be filled with items for a family in need

“Another big change we have seen is how much schools have had to step up,” says Simon. “Teachers have been trying to work online all day and then spending their evenings driving around with boxes of food.

“They are the ones seeing these kids each day, so they know who needs help.”

Denise Dale and Barry Coles delivery pallets of food to organisations, schools and food banks across the city

Denise Dale and Barry Coles, who live just around the corner from the warehouse, are two of the people responsible for delivering the food to where it’s needed. They are currently checking each of the pallets packed and ready to go out.

Labels on each of the massive pallets have details of where each will be delivered – with Bristol responsible for coordinating food drops in Devon and Cornwall as well as the city and outskirts.

“I enjoy it because I’m helping people out and I get a lot of pleasure out of that to think someone’s going to get some food because of our work,” Barry tells Bristol24/7.

FareShare UK received some £16m from DEFRA specifically to buy food. Even with a share of this funding, it has still been a huge undertaking for FareShare South West to put in place the infrastructure in the empty building and coordinate the safe delivery of food to more than 300 charities, food banks and organisations in Bristol alone.

Warehouse manager Dave Suckling says it has taken a huge effort to scale up FareShare’s operations

Dave Suckling, a former accountant who started off volunteering with FareShare before being made warehouse manager, admits it was a huge undertaking to scale up to meet the demand created by the pandemic.

Sitting in his makeshift office in the former bed showroom, he talks with pride about the work that has been carried out in challenging circumstances over the last few months.

Alongside storing, packing and distributing pallets and boxes of food to be given to those in need, the charity also runs an employability initiative, working with City of Bristol College and others. There are plans to set up an employability warehouse in 2021.

The efforts of hundreds across the city have helped ensure those in need not only have vital supplies but also toys and treat items to brighten up dark times.

If Simon’s predictions come true, even more will be needed to tackle food poverty as we go into 2021.

The warehouse on Winterstoke Road has enabled FareShare to me than triple the amount of food it distributes

It has taken a colossal effort to meet the demand for food across the city

 All photos by Ellie Pipe (main photo of volunteer Yagne Castano Araujo and supervisor Cassandra Frey-Mills)

Read more: New campaign hopes to build stockpile of emergency food