Community larder - would you use one

[Moana987]

If you didn't need to for financial reasons?

Within a 15 minute drive I have 3 Community larders where you just go and help yourself. Sometimes they have some decent stuff in and other times its just stale bread left.

I use them now and again, when passing I may have a look but financially I dont need to use them so I feel guilty sometimes encase others need the food.

They are not food banks. They are to stop food that's perfectly fine going to waste.

Would you use one?

No I wouldn’t. I can afford food and have no need of it.

I've never used one and don't know if any near to me but I'd use one of they took donations. I have used the TooGoodTOGo app to buy leftover food from Costa.

I pop by a local one now and again. In my workplace, I work with people who need to use them for financial reasons, and I found it eases their embarrassment and reluctance, when I say I pop into them and they are actually for communities to reduce waste as much as save money too.

It's about reducing food waste.

I've taken perishable food from a children's centre in the afternoon before now. Usually bread. Local organisations would donate things, dont know if it officially counted as a community pantry or not. As I dont need help buying food, I didn't take the non perishables.

Several of us who work in this field have replied to say that sometimes it is about reducing food waste, but sometimes it is not, or that is a fig leaf. It really is down to the individual place.

Ours is open in the village on Friday lunchtime to early afternoon. They rarely get rid of all they have and often post on the local Facebook that they have a glut of cabbage or something. I pop in if they post about a glut and it's something I can use. It's organised by the lady who runs the community centre and it is leftover food from one of the local supermarkets, not associated with any foodbank. It's almost all fresh stuff - baked goods and fruit and veg that a foodbank wouldn't normally supply.
There is also a free tea and biscuit on offer and this is mostly frequented by the old folks who are there all afternoon having a chat with neighbours and a cuppa. Over the winter they do a warm space also with a hot cuppa and there is a community Friday fish and chip meal monthly that is very low cost.

And there is no national / agreed standard, I’d add. Most (I’d wager all tbh) of these places are grassroots and not always formally constituted or connected.

Several of you can only speak for your sspecific location.

Is it The Company Shop?

I do when I can get there. Also get the 1:50 Lidl boxes. And I’m not embarrassed at all to use them

I think I would if I saw one. I’m currently using windfalls from next door (nobody living there atm) and picking wild fruit to eat, freezing what I don’t use immediately.

Our Lidl doesn't do those. They did a few years back when it first started and I got a couple. It was annoying that they sat them after the till, so you either paid and didn't know what was there or had to select and go back through.

I had the same dilemma as there is one near me. I messaged to explain that I didn't need to for financial reasons, although it would help, and asked their advice and they were very much of the view that it is to reduce food waste.

Obviously people in need can still get it, they just need to get there early on in the day to ensure it's not all gone. My local one has just been shut down as it they didn't have fridges and some asshole reported them to environmental health!

I support our local community larder. It’s for everyone no questions asked. Everyone pays £5 and then gets to choose any 10 items (it may be 15 items).

Our larder is to reduce waste, and to make low cost shopping a dignified option.

I haven’t used it as too far away. If I was nearby I might.

It's not a food bank... It's to stop food waste. My wife volunteers at one. They go around the supermarkets get food that has or is about to go out of date and give it away to anyone.

So yes.

To be fair, if food required refrigeration, and they weren't refrigerating it, then it's a serious health risk.

The food was never really there long enough to need refrigerated, it was all collected fairly quickly but I do understand your point.

There are a few locally. I haven’t used them have given to them as an Olio rep when we have far to much stuff and run out of people asking. Always far too many breads and bananas.

They are open to everyone larders then there are the pay a fee weekly ones and the just food bank referral ones quite well separated.

OP and anyone else interested - this is an interesting bit of recent research which touches on why people use local community pantries/larders/etc. (Which I was involved in <polishes halo>) In general Feeding Britain is interesting on anything to do with food waste, poverty and distribution in the UK.

feedingbritain.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/FINAL-Feeding-Community-Report.pdf

If reducing food waste is the sole aim of some of these larders, I don’t get it.

If the supermarkets were serious about cutting food waste, they could improve their forecasting to prevent it, and discount short dated food earlier in the day to ensure it sells. Or even give it away to their customers in the half hour before closing. That has to be better for the environment than volunteers driving the food to a different location.

Hell no. It's not a charity shop that might have some cute vintage outfit. It's a bloody food bank.

Stop going there.

Correction - start going there. With food. To make up for your disgraceful past greed.

I don't but I do use the community orchards we have locally. They have plenty of produce and so much of it goes to waste, I have no qualms using those.

I tend to go towards the end of the sessions. People needing food have had plenty of time to take what they want, and what's left may well get wasted.

Win - win: less food is wasted, and I get free(ish) food.

I don't think it's morally wrong to go at the beginning though, whatever one's financial situation.

It's not a food bank, the sole purpose is to reduce food waste.