A London food rescue charity that collects surplus food from food businesses and delivers it in its own vans to hundreds of community meal projects, from its depots in Acton and Spitalfields.
City Harvest is a London charity that rescues food. Each day, farms, wholesalers, manufacturers, caterers, restaurants and supermarkets are left with fresh food that is still in date but that they cannot sell. City Harvest collects it in a fleet of refrigerated vans and delivers it, free of charge, to charities and community groups such as food banks, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, schools and refuges. They turn it into meals and food parcels. The charity describes itself as London's first last-mile food rescue organisation and says it delivers food for more than 1.2 million meals a month and has delivered over 60 million meals to date (as at May 2024).
City Harvest was started in 2014 by Laura and Steve Winningham, after an earlier project called UR4Driving. Laura Winningham, its chief executive, received an OBE in 2020 for services to the London community during the Covid-19 pandemic. Its stated mission is to reduce food poverty and protect the planet by redirecting nutritious surplus food to people who need it. The tagline is "Rescuing food, people, and planet". The charity lists five values, shaped with staff, volunteers, trustees and charity partners: community-focused, aspiring, collaborative, compassionate and trustworthy.
Its work is all in London. The main base is a depot in Acton, west London, and it also has sites in south London and a depot in east London at New Spitalfields Market. A site at New Covent Garden Market at Nine Elms opened in 2024. It says it supports more than 375 charities and serves over 130,000 people a week. In the pandemic it joined The Felix Project and FareShare to form the London Food Alliance, working with the Mayor of London's office to get food into community hubs in every borough. It is also a founding member of Xcess, a UK network of food redistribution organisations.
On culture, the charity says it uses food as a way to connect people who are vulnerable to other kinds of support, and it presents itself as part of London's community. It holds the Investing in Volunteers accreditation, which suggests volunteers are well looked after, and it runs events and campaigns such as the City Harvest Festival food drive. Drivers and volunteers feature prominently on its pages. It describes its operations as data-driven, and it carries out its own research on food waste and food poverty in London. These are the charity's own descriptions.
The jobs behind a rescue charity include van drivers and drivers' mates, warehouse and food-safety staff, volunteer managers, partnership and fundraising teams, and people who gather data and run research. There are also communications, finance and operations roles. If you want to see your work turn directly into meals, and you like practical, fast-moving jobs, this kind of charity can be a rewarding place to build a career. Its website has current roles and volunteering information.
Website: www.cityharvest.org.uk
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