Throughout the school holidays, Bidfood, one of the UK’s leading foodservice providers, rolled out its Action Against Holiday Hunger campaign at nine of its sites across the UK. The campaign’s aim was to support those who need it most by engaging with local communities and supporting their holiday provision projects, fuelling them with supplies and volunteering support.
As part of the Action Against Holiday Hunger campaign, Bidfood’s Yorkshire depot has been working in partnership with FareShare Yorkshire, donating a variety of surplus stock on a bi-weekly basis to help them fuel over 50 projects across Yorkshire. As well as this, Matthew Tracey, one of Bidfood’s food development chefs, attended one of these projects at the South Leeds Youth Hub. During the session, Matt cooked up delicious and nutritious meals to feed the children attending the sessions, whilst also providing families helpful advice on how to cook on a budget and make food go further.
Discussing the initiative, Matthew Tracey, Development Chef at Bidfood, said: “It breaks my heart to know that there are so many children in our local communities that go hungry during the summer holiday, so when I learnt that Bidfood was organising this campaign, I jumped at the chance to personally help support these families. It has been great to work with our Wakefield depot and FareShare Yorkshire, to know that together we have supported over 50 projects, and as a result, fed hundreds of young children across Yorkshire.”
Talking about Bidfood’s support, Amy Smith, Volunteer at DAZL Yorkshire, said: “It was fantastic to have Matt’s kind support at our Healthy Holiday Camp this summer. During his time with us, he made a variety of delicious dishes that fed over 40 young people and 10 staff during the day – plus he did it all without a working oven!
Thank you very much Matt and Bidfood for all your support, we really appreciate it!”
FareShare is the UK’s largest charity fighting hunger and food waste, by re distributing stock to frontline charity projects around the country. This summer FareShare donated to a large variety of holiday provision projects to help support hungry children during their school holidays.
Talking about the donations from Bidfood, Gareth Batty, Chief Executive at FareShare Yorkshire, said: “Thank you to Bidfood who helped FareShare Yorkshire support 51 holiday projects this summer. By providing nutritious meals and snacks Bidfood and FareShare ensured that children enjoyed their summer holidays and return to school happy and healthy.”
