Bristol Food Union
Bristol, February 2022
When the lockdown of Spring 2020 came in to force over 80% of hospitality businesses temporarily closed. The previous May had recorded a monthly turnover for the sector of over £9bn. In May 2020 this dramatically fell to just over £1bn. For companies that rely overwhelmingly on the customer coming to them there was little scope to carry on trading in the short term.
The idea of Bristol Food Union was prompted by a statement from the Prime Minister on the 17th March 2020 where Boris Johnson advised the British public to stay away from hospitality businesses to slow the spread of Covid-19. An emergency meeting was held between members of the sector in Bristol to draw up a plan to support businesses and an emergency food response. Two main areas were targeted; feeding frontline NHS workers and supporting the numerous independent food producers in the city.
James Koch is one of the directors of the Gallimaufry, a community venue in Bishopston. "When we went into it first lockdown in March, 2020 there was a group of independent restaurateurs, similar to us, that realized we had the time, we had kitchen and staff capacity, and we realized there was an opportunity and a necessity to help. We initially focused on the NHS and the expectation that they were going to get overwhelmed".
Despite calls from the government panic buying, coupled with logistical problems, soon meant shelves were running low in the first lockdown. Not all stores were open and supermarkets heavily limited numbers entering the store, meaning long queues formed patiently outside. Many NHS staff were working long and unpredictable shifts finishing in unsociable hours. "When shops and restaurants are closed, it's harder for them to pick up bits". James explains. "They're doing long days, and they're exhausted. So just to provide them with a hot meal a day was good for morale".
James paints the picture of how the Food Union pulled together the hospitality sector across the city. "You've got multiple, multiple restaurants with multiple chefs. And then you've got another layer of distributors, drivers, helpers that are packing deliveries. I mean, hundreds of people, citywide". It's an astonishing feat organised with little notice by a sector badly affected by the pandemic.
Across the other side of the city Tessa Lidstone, co-founder of restaurant Box-E, spent the first lockdown preparing 2000 food boxes to be sent to young people who had left care and had been identified as needing additional support. This was a group who were under 25 years old, some supporting young families. "What does the pandemic do to you? Who picks up the pieces? Who's checking in on you?" Tessa asked herself. "I just instantly was like, that's it, that is what I'm going to do. Initially it was going to be two weeks of emergency food boxes. But after two weeks of organizing it, it was clear that the demand was very much still there".
Tessa worked alongside Bristol Council and after the initial deliveries funding was available if she was willing to keep the project going. "So I did, but from that point onwards, I made it much more sort of tailored to the young people. Instead of just being an emergency food response it was then the idea to do a recipe every week for them with a video that went on their Facebook group. They could cook along if they wanted to, and sort of have some, somebody kind of checking in on them".
For some of the recipients the weekly food parcel was the only social interaction they had during the lockdown. Tessa arranged for other items to be donated, essentials like nappies and baby food for example. Tessa ran this for sixteen weeks eventually by which point things had started to open up and council personal assistants had a bigger involvement. Alongside the council Tessa restarted the project for Christmas and this was then carried on in the Spring when another national lockdown was imposed.
What's amazing is that Tessa has a young family on top of running an award winning restaurant. James equally runs a busy and consuming business but still gave up his own time by effectively taking on another full time job. And both of their focuses were on groups who, for one reason or another, might not have the time or chance to prepare good food for themselves. Of all the things that will come out of the pandemic perhaps the one we really need to keep in the front of our minds is how so many people gave up their time to support their community and others.
"It was really, really helpful to know that there was good in the world and to have our customers come together and help the project as well was so lovely" Tessa says. At a time when the world was hit by Covid it could feel very overwhelming "but even if you change something for one person, it is still worth it".