It’s 10 o’ clock on a summer Friday morning at the Gardener Café. Mick is carrying a box of red peppers down to the kitchen where vats of black beans and quinoa are bubbling. Sarah is making pastry for scones, sweet and savoury, cartons of yellow label strawberries, just on the turn, piled behind her ready for Karen Lloyd to reduce them into an accompanying jam. Elodie is chopping pretty pink radishes, and the air is fresh with camaraderie. 

This is the Real Junk Food Project’s central Brighton kitchen, bang in Gardener Street in the middle of the North Laine’s most vibrant shopping and café area. Mick and Sarah are volunteers, Karen and Elodie just two of the few paid staff, and the red peppers, black beans, quinoa, flour and strawberries just part of a massive haul from the overnight supermarket waste run. 

The Real Junk Food Project, whose mantra is “feed bellies not bins” was created by Adam Smith in Leeds in 2013, and has since grown into a national and international movement of cafes, projects and pop-ups with one core objective: To intercept food waste destined for land fill and use it to feed people who need it, on a ‘pay as you feel’ basis. With afterschool clubs at its sister café, The Fitzherbert Community Hub in Kemptown, and pay as you feel cafes at St Lukes Church, Hollingdean Community Centre and Bevendean Hub, it’s a busy operation.

“We have volunteers driving electric vans to supermarkets across the city picking up amazing food that would otherwise go to waste,” Karen told me. “We get cakes and breads, flour, dairy, all sorts of vegetables. A lot of it hasn’t even got the stickers on it. It’s just surplus. There’s literally nothing wrong with the food at all. But if it’s not collected that will just go into the bins and into landfill. It’s absolutely disgusting.” 

Disgusting is the right word. “A quarter to a third of food produced globally, is wasted” says the RJFP website, “and yet, there’s estimated to be 795 million people who do not get enough to eat. In the UK, two million people are estimated to be malnourished, while the UK as a whole creates an estimated 15 million tonnes of food waste every year.” If waste was a country, according to the UN, it would be the third largest in the world. 

But there’s not much time to chat about the politics this morning. Karen and her team are on a deadline. “Once it comes to our cafes, we chefs look at the food, decide on the menu, and get on with it”, says Karen. ‘We have three hours to get on with service.” 

The black beans, which have been soaked overnight, are going to go into a chilli and the Buddha bowls. The quinoa will become a tabouleh, while the pumpkin seeds have been roasted with a little bit of tamari. The mung beans have also been soaking to encourage them to sprout and will be added to the Buddha bowls. 

In the walk-in fridge, massive Kilner jars of fermented celeriac, sauerkraut, kimchis and jams line the shelves. Herbs, tomatoes, lettuces, courgettes and cucumbers – often organic and donated from personal allotments, local farmers and Infinity Foods, but most of which have come in on the supermarket run in the last 24 hours, are piled high in boxes, ready to be cooked up over the weekend.

By lunchtime, the tables outside are packed with students, families and homeless people, often sharing a long table. “It’s all pay-as-you-feel” says Karen, “so it gives everyone the chance to get a really good meal.” This is a place to have lunch with a friend, or strike up a conversation with someone with a whole new life view. You choose. “It does get people talking” says Karen, “and hopefully they talk about how good the food is. I think that’s what food does, doesn’t it?”

If people can afford it though, they try to encourage them to pay it forward. And with funding a perpetual problem on top of the cost of living crisis driving people to find food more cheaply, it’s hitting the tills at the Gardener Café hard. “We have a suggested donation of £6.50”, but most people are 

giving £1 or £2 for a full meal.”

The daily lunch on Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday is just one part of what Karen and her team of volunteers cook up over the course of the week. “This Saturday, we’re doing a 60th birthday party for 100 people. We’re making canapes and Buddha bowls for them. When the clients come to see us, we’ll go through a basic menu and make them aware it can change. We did a canape event on Wednesday for Wired Sussex. They wanted to know what the menu was going to be, but I couldn’t give it to them until three hours before the event because the ingredients can change. But when we got there and they saw the food, they were amazed by it.”

It’s clear that this is much more than a cheffing job for Karen, whose signature red lipstick and bleach blonde quiff suggests an interesting back story. “I moved to Brighton five years ago after living in Spain for 15 years. My partner had died and I was trying to find work and get back into the catering. I did some voluntary work for Junk Food, and I found my family, basically. That’s what it felt like. So, it really helped me to find my feet again after a very sad time in my life.”

If you want to get involved with the Real Junk Food Project, go to its website for more information. Donate if you can, but the real fun is lunch in the sunshine with whoever sits next to you. Just remember to pay it forward.

http://www.realjunkfoodbrighton.co.uk

Since writing this article we’ve learned that the Gardener Street cafe is to close.  The Real Junk Food Project put out this statement: 

“It is with great regret that the directors of @realjunkfoodbrighton have decided to discontinue their lease for the cafe on Gardner Street and, as a consequence, the Gardener will close on 25th September 2023. When we first signed up to take on a city-centre cafe using the pay-as-you-feel model, we knew there were going to be many challenges. We could not have foreseen the imminent Covid-19 pandemic, but we managed to weather the associated lockdowns and have continued to provide much needed meals to thousands in our community over the three years since.

Sadly, the current economic crisis is putting extra strain on the food industry and this, combined with soaring energy bills and ongoing building maintenance works, mean that the costs are just too heavy for us to keep the Gardener open. The latter is also taking its toll on our staff and volunteers in a way that is simply not sustainable. Whilst the doors of the Gardener are closing, the mission of The Real Junk Food Project continues and we are optimistic for the future. Our customers in Hollingdean Community Centre, St Luke’s Prestonville and the Fitzherbert Hub in Kemptown will still be able to benefit from pay-as-you-feel lunches created by our wonderful teams.

We hope that by unburdening ourselves from the financial liabilities of the Gardener, we will be able to focus precious resources and energy into our existing venues and commitments.

A massive thank you to all staff, volunteers and everyone who has been involved in our lovely cafe. And thank you Infinity Foods Co-operative for being a supportive landlord.