A favourite Bristol eatery, Pieminister, have recently reached a milestone in food provision to FareShare South West by donating 21 tonnes of pies since 2019, which equates to 50,000 meals!
Since 2003, Co-founders Tristan Hogg and Jon Simon have been producing and selling their delicious pies from their Bristol kitchens – building up a business with a loyal following and now employing around 300 people. They believe that food businesses need to be part of the solution, not part of the problem when it comes to food waste and have been donating their surplus and ‘wonky’ pies to us for over a year. These are then distributed to frontline charities across the South West – helping in the fight against increasing food insecurity within our region.
Tristan, Co-Founder and MD says: “We want to ensure that every pie we make is put to good use and none go to waste – any surplus pies are donated to those that need them the most and the majority are collected weekly by FareShare South West.”
They are evidently committed to their sustainability goals and have a number of great initiatives with their “Little Acts of Pieness” – ranging from providing pies for St Peter’s Hospice staff, patients and visitors, donating 5% of their beer profits to FRANK water, encouraging people to direct their money to good causes during Black Friday – with Black Pieday, tree planting projects in Malawi and much more besides. So far 200,000 of their pies have been put to good use in this way in the last four years alone.
Here at FareShare South West we’re very grateful for this partnership not only as it means our warehouse is always stocked with lots of delicious pies for our beneficiaries, it also helps us to increase our network within the region. We feel that working with local food producers like Pieminister is mutually beneficial and helps to establish a community lead approach to tackling food waste.
This kind of surplus redistribution can also contribute to a significant saving of CO2 emissions. For example the energy it take for the pies to be produced and not consumed, to be disposed of and from the transport costs if they were to be taken further afield can then be redirected to delivering them to people in need locally.
Tristan says “We’re taking action to be as sustainable as is necessary and to ensure we stay focused and effective in our actions, we have set ourselves a series of ambitious goals to hit by 2025. One is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 50%, which actually exceeds the Science Based Target Initiative for a business of our size, but we think anything less just isn’t an option.”
FareShare South West have been accepted onto the Big Give Green Match Fund – where all donations made between 22nd – 29th APRIL will be matched and doubled! The money will go towards helping us make more connections with local food suppliers to collect their surplus and extend our reach across the region.
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT HOW THE DONTAIONS WILL BE USED AND HOW TO DONATE
