Cook Trading has partnered with London charity The Felix Project to donate surplus food left over from its production line into meals that are redistributed to communities around London.
The “closed loop” system sees leftover prepared ingredients from Cook’s Classics kitchen in Sittingbourne, Kent collected in reusable plastic tubs, which are then used by Felix Project chefs to make ready meals at its production kitchen in Poplar, east London.
Cook estimates the process has helped it to prevent an estimated 16 tonnes of surplus, but otherwise good to eat, food from going to waste or anaerobic digestion since the trial launched in January. The B Corp is looking at how to roll the process out to its other manufacturing facilities at Sittingbourne and its dessert factory in Somerset.
The current system came out of a similar trial Cook launched with FareShare last year, as part of its efforts to cut its end of line food waste. It involved Cook chefs manually dishing surplus ingredients, like curry sauces or prepped veg, into trays, which were then frozen and distributed to FareShare sites.
While the food was “well received”, the costs in time, packaging and labour proved too expensive for Cook to sustain at scale, Andy Stephens, Cook head of sustainable food, told The Grocer.
When the initiative was revisited late last year, it was decided to instead trial storing the surplus products as chilled.
“That then reduces massively the number of partners you can work with,” he said. “It was a bit of trial and error before eventually finding the right partner to fit.”
‘Closed loop’ system
The project was inspired by a smaller trial with food brand Allplants, which introduced Cook to The Felix Project team and helped to polish the process.
The Poplar site manufactures around 5,000 meals a day, all made from donated surplus food, which are redistributed as ready meals to The Felix Project’s partner sites.
“Because the kitchen is able to cook on scale and extend the life of products, we can accept other formats of food that other Felix Project sites can’t,” said Will Griffiths, production kitchen manager at the Poplar site.
End-of-line surplus is now collected in reusable 10-litre tubs, which are then individually labelled by Cook staff. They’re collected every Monday and Thursday by a Felix Project van as part of its standard collection rounds.
The charity’s chefs then base their recipes on the ingredients provided. The containers are industrially cleaned at the Poplar site, then delivered back to Cook when the next batch of surplus is collected. Each plastic container has an estimated lifespan of 50 uses.
Initial volumes started small, while chefs got used to ingredients and how they could be processed, but now The Felix Project will receive between 500kg to 1,000kg of Cook surplus each week. It’s the equivalent of around 40,000 meals since the project started, Stephens estimates.
“It’s a very small proportion of the food they produce, but it’s a very significant contribution to all of the charitable organisations that we support. I can’t really underestimate the quality, and the success of having that previously-unaccounted-for waste stream,” Griffiths said.
Cook initially received funding from FareShare’s Surplus with Purpose fund as a proof of concept, but now absorbs the costs of packaging and packing as part of its operations.
However, despite the added cost, Stephens insists it’s the right thing to do. Cook also uses surplus from its production lines in its staff kitchens. The launch of a new range of frozen cooking sauces in April was also partly inspired by efforts to reduce surplus sauce bases from going to waste.
“There’s a quote that ‘waste is an absence of imagination’, which is in some ways true. But it’s also because once you’ve had the idea, you need to put a lot of effort and improvement into that. We’re excited to grow this further,” Stephens said.
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