UK Restaurant is Letting People Pay-as-They-Can While Rescuing Tons of Food

A Gloucestershire restaurant is rethinking relationships with customers, suppliers and the entire food economy to fuel an ambitious “pay as you can” model that feeds allcomers, regardless of ability to pay.

This fantastic achievement is rooted in two significant challenges faced by the UK: price inflation has increased the average cost of food by a quarter, and as many as 10 million Brits, Scots, and N. Irish are malnourished.

In the past year, The Long Table has fed about 20,000 people at below-cost price – many for no charge at all, no questions asked – while rescuing 3.4 tonnes of food destined for the bin and paying local suppliers fair prices for the rest.

It has also made enough money to employ 22 part-time and full-time members of staff on at least the real living wage – no work is done by volunteers – and hopes to replicate the model elsewhere.

“We are, at our simplest, a restaurant,” says Will North, The Long Table’s general manager. “But really what we are is an amazing restaurant where we prioritise being a real living wage employer, [and] we prioritise the kinds of suppliers who not only prioritise [the] planet, but people as well.

(The Long Table has rescued 3.4 tonnes of food, while also paying local suppliers fair prices. Photograph: The Long Table)

An estimated 8 million adults and 3 million children are facing food insecurity in the UK in 2024 – twice the rate in 2021. Hospitals have seen an alarming rise in admissions for vitamin and mineral deficiencies and malnutrition, diagnoses doctors have described as rooted in poverty.

Aside from the injustice of food being thrown away while children go to bed hungry, such waste has a huge impact on the climate and the wider environment.

Food waste accounts for approximately 18m tonnes of carbon emissions each year. As befits the name, diners at The Long Table sit together at long, canteen-style tables, in an atmosphere North describes as “radical hospitality”.

The restaurant, which operates alongside a bicycle recycling workshop and a secondhand furniture warehouse, opens at 10am for coffee and cake. Lunch is served from noon, five days a week, with dinners also served on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

(A typical lunch service feeds between 100 and 250 people. Photograph: The Long Table)

Everyone eats the same meal based on what the managers are rescuing from their suppliers, but that doesn’t mean the menu is stale.

(Chefs at work in The Long Table kitchen. Photograph: Adam Lewis/The Long Table)

Ref: UK Restaurant is Letting People Pay-as-They-Can While Rescuing Tons of Food (theguardian)

Photo Credit: The Long Table