barefoot vegan sept_oct issue.pdf

food was there and we knew that there was going to be
people to eat it. All we needed was a space with some
tables, some forks and a cooker.
individuals who might be moving out of their house or
clearing out the cupboards. On any one day in the café,
the food could have come from up to 12 different places.
So were all those things, such as space and
the practical things you needed, donated?
Yes. We had one initial meeting with a few people to talk
about what Bristol was doing in terms of redistributing
food waste and then we just literally got out into the city
one day on our bikes and cycled around, looking for
empty spaces, and speaking to people. We found a café
space that had a kitchen in it and wasn’t being used. It
was a reasonable size, it had all the equipment we
needed, and it was in a very central location. It just made
sense.
And in terms of sourcing the food, how did
you go about it? Is it skip-diving or is it
donated from supermarkets? How does it
work?
So it’s really open and basically we’re not really concerned
about the origin of the food because we know that there
is food being wasted at every stage of the supply change -
from the farm to the fork. So food may come from
individual farmers and food market contract farmers,
wholesalers, distributors, people who are marketing food,
PR agencies, restaurants, cafés, farm shops and even
Are there any kinds of regulations that you
have to be aware of in terms of dealing
with the food?
“In running Skipchen the way we do,
sometimes we operate outside of the law by
obtaining food from the supermarket that has
been deemed unsellable and we’re still
serving it. So in that sense we're quite
happy to come out and say that we operate
illegally, if that's what the law says. And
we feel that law should be changed.”
We describe ourselves as a campaign café and so it’s not
just a café dealing with food surplus. It’s also a café
that’s campaigning to change specific things about the
law and the politics of food. We feel there are injustices
and they need to be changed. One of
these is holding supermarkets
responsible for the level and the scale of
food waste that we see from the farm to
the supermarket shelf. In running
Skipchen the way we do, sometimes we
operate outside of the law by obtaining
food from the supermarket that has
been deemed unsellable and we’re still
serving it. So in that sense we're quite
happy to come out and say that we
operate illegally, if that's what the law says. And we feel
that law should be changed.
Most people don’t believe pay-as-you-feel
or gift economies can work. What do you
have to say about that?
I think sometimes people think that if they don’t have a
good understanding. So for example there are people
that don't pay or put pennies in or put a minimal
amount that wouldn't be considered to be a lot to
people with money. The reason for that is that they
either have drug or alcohol abuse problems, or they
maybe they don't have a home and they've been shut
out by the housing system. So there are I think a lot of
misunderstandings as to why people might not be as
generous as other people with their disposable income. I
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