National Facilities Management’s Something Beautiful scheme was created to support the mental wellbeing of its staff. After Geoff Mitchell (MD) read an article in his local Bath newspaper about FoodCyle Bath, a charity set up to tackle food waste and food poverty by creating weekly 3 course meals for the homeless and vulnerable in the Bath area, he knew he wanted to support both.
Therefore, after attending FoodCycle Bath, based in St Mary’s Catholic Church hall; meeting with the volunteers and seeing the issues they faced in the old kitchen, National FM donated and installed a brand-new commercial kitchen, with the assistance of Concept Catering Ltd who donated all of the fabrication and Glastonbury Festival Events Ltd who financed the dishwasher. Geoff explained, “we wanted to help support the great work the volunteers did, so hoped that by providing a new kitchen, it would allow the volunteers to spend less time in the kitchen preparing the food and more time interacting with their guests.”
Laura, Cooking Project Leader commented “We’re so happy to have the kitchen. There’s more space to prepare everything, which means we can be more efficient and the dishwasher especially, is amazing! It’s saved us so much time and is far more hygienic, compared to when we washed everything up by hand.” Another volunteer commented “the new kitchen is sleek and streamlined, like a racehorse!”
Between January and September 2019, 240 FoodCycle Bath volunteers have served 1054 guests and have utilised 5 tons of surplus food donated by local supermarkets. A recent survey carried out by FoodCycle Bath ascertained that 65% of their guests felt more confident and 88% of them now feel more part of the local community since they started attending.
To find out more about FoodCycle and how you can help, please visit their website: www.foodcycle.co.uk.