With the cost of living still on the rise, the business of charitable food redistribution carried out by national organisations like FareShare provides a vital lifeline for many families. Getting the food out into the community is one of the key operational challenges faced by the charity.
As part of the company’s commitment to community engagement, Medequip has begun a trial with FareShare, operated from the company’s Suffolk depot, using Medequip transport to deliver dry, tinned, fresh and frozen food to pop-up food charities and kitchens around the region.
FareShare consists of a national network of eighteen independent charitable food redistributors who consolidate good quality surplus food from sources across the food industry and successfully deliver this to some 8,500 frontline charities and community groups. From school breakfast clubs and community lunch clubs to homeless shelters and community cafés, FareShare provides the ingredients for almost a million meals for vulnerable people, each and every week.
The link with Medequip began with FareShare in Ipswich reaching out for more drivers and assistance with transport to help with day-to-day operations. The charity had recently moved to a larger depot with greater fridge and freezer capacity and needed additional logistics capabilities to deliver the produce in line with requirements.
The team at Medequip in Ipswich recognised the synergy with their own operation, delivering community loan equipment around the county, and the two organisations investigated how they could work together to optimise planned journeys and volunteer input.
We were pleased to have the opportunity to co-operate with FareShare to see how our transport network could provide some of the capacity needed to make sure the food reached the locations providing the FareShare service,
said Michaela Harris, General Manager for Medequip in the South West and Suffolk. We have an active corporate programme of community engagement and volunteering, so the link seemed a good fit for Medequip.
There were some important safety considerations for FareShare concerning the transportation of foodstuffs, but Medequip easily met these standards in terms of food hygiene for transportation. Medequip vans are thoroughly cleaned down every day to ensure the highest standards of cleanliness.
We’re delighted to have the support of Medequip in Suffolk to help us with ensuring our food reaches the right places at the right time, emabling us to provide meals for local communities,
stated Michael Barrett, Regional Manager for FareShare. Keeping our costs to an absolute minimum means we are able to reach more people and continue to make a difference using quality food to prepare nutritious meals.
The trial is currently running from Medequip’s Ipswich depot, covering Tuesday deliveries for the charity. Once the logistics have been established and evaluated, Medequip expects to look at how this could be expanded into neighbouring FareShare areas in Essex and Norfolk, where Medequip also manages community equipment loan services.