The food Projects
Transition Stirling, in partnership with the Kitchen at 44, established Stirling Community Food in March 2020.
Based at 5 Wellgreen Lane in Stirling town centre, Stirling Community Food helps reduce food waste. Instead of supermarkets putting large volumes of excess and near-sell-by-date food in the bin, the project collects this excess food and offers it to everyone in the community for free. Customers can collect bakery goods, fridge and freezer items and a variety of fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers.
We do ask that you "take all you can eat but eat all you take". This allows us to help as many people as possible access food in these challenging times.
Our project is run mostly by volunteers giving up their time to make a difference in our community.
Since its launch at the beginning of lockdown in March, Stirling Community Food has gone from strength to strength, distributing over three hundred tonnes of food over the last 4 years - the equivalent of 450,054 meals - serving the double purpose of reducing food poverty and food waste.
Food is currently being donated from our local branches of Marks & Spencer, Aldi, Lidl, Waitrose, Bookers, and KFC.
This project was initiated through funding from Stirling Council, through a winning pitch by Julie McPhee to the Lens Intrapreneurship Programme. This was to begin a community fridge, a small project making sandwiches from local eateries, for example, available through a fridge that would be open to the public at 44 King Street.
This project has been kindly part-funded by Stirling Council, but due to the consequences of coronavirus we had more work to do than we expected.
We were overwhelmed with support from our crowdfunding campaign, with so many wonderful supportive locals donating to the project. We were also extremely grateful for the additional funding from the Wellbeing Fund, Awards for All and donations from local businesses.
Due to additional funding from the Adapt and Thrive and the Community Recovery Fund, we were able to open our current premises at 5 Wellgreen Lane.
A huge thank you must go to Creative Stirling’s Made In Stirling for letting us use 44 King Street at the beginning of this project in March 2020 and to Azam from Computer Division, who provided the space on Upper Craigs. The Stirling Community of local businesses has been fantastic.
Learn More About Community Food Projects
Community Fridges, also referred to as Community Food Larders, have been successfully introduced in Spain, Germany and other parts of the UK. In 2019, an estimated 987,890 tonnes of food and drink were wasted in Scotland, which suggests that food waste is actually a bigger cause of climate change than plastics.
The Community Fridge does not only help reduce food waste, but can also enable people to connect to their communities and access nutritious food. A Community Fridge is different to a Food Bank, because normally to secure food from food banks, you need to be referred to the service, whereas a Community Fridge is open and available to all.