Flitwick Community Fridge brings people and businesses together to share food, meet up, learn new skills, and prevent fresh food from going to waste. Our core aims are to reduce food waste and to help local people struggling with the cost-of-living crisis. Originally set up by Flitwick Town Council (FTC) in January 2023, Flitwick Community Fridge has steadily built up to redistributing approximately 2,500 kilos of food each month.
You’ll usually find a selection of fresh fruit and vegetables, bread and limited dairy products; what’s available depends on what’s been donated. All food is free. We are not a traditional food bank, although we stock a very modest community larder to offer immediate support.
We're extremely grateful to our local community partners, including Tesco Flitwick, Co-op Flitwick, and Waitrose Ampthill, which donate food every day. Further information about the service is available here.
Our services are in great demand, and we have been working hard to increase the volume of food available. However, we're now hitting the limits of what we can achieve in our existing space and with our budget. We have exciting plans to change our model:
- Later this summer, we will move into a dedicated space at The Rufus Centre after securing £8,000 of grant funding to convert a redundant set of showers into a stock room and new shop front.
- Our new space will allow us to begin acting as a food hub for the local area. The food hub concept allows us to pool our efforts on collection work and distribute food to other locations. We're already working with Clophill Community Hub, which has plans to open a fridge, and we're considering other locations (which will be run by other local groups, not Flitwick!).
- We need a dedicated van because we can no longer fit the volume of food we're handling in our cars. A van would also allow us to take food into the community; we're interested in collaborating with the lower schools to distribute food to parents waiting in the playground!
* Charities pay a small fee for our service. Find out how much it is and what we do for it.
