The Coronation Food Project
Coordinated by The King Charles III Charitable Fund, the Coronation Food Project seeks to bridge the gap between food waste and food need across all four nations of the United Kingdom, helping people and helping the planet.
There are three pillars to The Coronation Food Project:
- Saving more surplus food.
- Supercharging food distribution networks to ensure surplus produce can reach those who need it most, through the creation of several Coronation Food Hubs.
- Delivering a flexible funding programme to support the wider sector and a consortium of pioneering food-rescue initiatives.
The Coronation Food Project builds on previous work in this area. In December 2022, a £1million fund was launched, which included a personal donation by His Majesty The King. Through this fund, over 800 commercial fridges and freezers have been distributed to key locations across the United Kingdom – which has transformed the sector’s capacity to save, store and redistribute surplus food. There is an urgent need to do more, with up to 14 million people facing food insecurity in the United Kingdom.
Background
The Food Project follows in the footsteps of previous Royal initiatives, including The Felix Project, kick-started by a donation from The King Charles III Charitable Fund, which supplied fridges and freezers to hundreds of charities across the UK, enabling them to rescue and store more fresh and frozen food.
In 2021 The Prince's Foundation launched the pilot scheme 'Food for the Future' to help educate young people about food supply and production. This education programme formed part of the Foundation's wider food waste initiative known as 'Making Food Go Further'.
Be Inspired
To celebrate and spread awareness of the Coronation Food Project, a selection of chefs and foodie creators were invited to create their own low-waste recipe using just four ingredients (or less!) and leaving little to no waste.
Each of the creators was also invited to attend the launch event with Their Majesties at Didcot, to discuss their work in this field and the recipe that they had created.
Read on to find out what they chose!
SeppsEats
Voted Fortnum's Digital Creator of the Year, Giuseppe Federici, known online as SeppsEats, created a Roasted Butternut Squash Pasta, consisting of pasta, butternut squash, onion and garlic.
Bettina's Kitchen
Bettina Campolucci Bordi, who has been working to fight food waste for over twelve years, created a Leek, Potato, Carlin Pea and Greens Bake with Herbed Croutons.
Bettina's recipe aims to highlight some of the UK's most discarded ingredients. Potatoes and bread are given a new lease of life; the former meld into the bake, while the latter is transformed into a golden crust that provides a crunch. A generous sprinkling of cheese, another often wasted dairy product, melts to perfection, creating a gooey layer that's impossible to resist.
The dish is not just about flavour, but also flexibility. The versatile Carlin peas can be swapped with any bean, embracing using whatever is on hand.
Crystelle Pereira
Crystelle Pereira, a former Great British Bake Off Finalist, created a Cheesecake Quesadilla using cream cheese, tortilla, sugar and cinnamon.
Jason Howard
Chef Jason Howard and The Future Plate, a culinary village of leading Black chefs, created a Honey and Sesame Glazed Broccoli Stem recipe. This requires soya sauce, honey, sesame seeds and broccoli stems.
Over 2500 tonnes of broccoli stems are discarded every year nationwide, so this recipe provides a way to utilise the vegetable to its fullest.
1 Year On
Celebrating two special birthdays - His Majesty's 76th and the Coronation Food Project's 1st - The King opened the initiative’s first two Coronation Food Hubs – Deptford (in person) and Merseyside (virtually).
The hubs - major distribution centres, designed to save and circulate tonnes of surplus food – are set to transform the ability of charities like FareShare and the Felix Project to support communities in need.
The Coronation Food Project is investing in a network of hubs, adding scale and capacity to warehouses, boosting cold storage facilities and funding lorries, vans and drivers to boost their distribution capacity. For example, a newly installed industrial freezer, which The King viewed during the visit, will increase capacity by 400%, significantly improving the charity's ability to preserve more surplus food.
In just twelve months, remarkable progress has been made towards reaching the project’s three goals. Working with charities FareShare and the Felix Project, along with leaders from across the food industry, the Coronation Food Project has already saved an additional 940 tonnes of surplus food – equivalent to 2,240,000 meal portions. £15 million has been raised to design, build and run a network of up to ten Coronation Food Hubs across the UK.
The Coronation Food Project has also given £715,000 in community food grants to 33 organisations across the UK. This includes a grant to East Belfast Mission which runs a range of food related projects, including a daily community fridge for people to come each week to collect high quality fresh surplus produce and UKHarvest’s Grub Club which involves pupils and parents in distributing surplus food to schools.
