Millions of Britons struggle to put food on the table. Are social supermarkets, where surplus stock from big retailers is discounted, the solution?
Near the tills, in what looks, at first glance, like a standard convenience store, is a shelving unit crammed with goods, all bearing a familiar high street logo. There are packs of flour and jars of pitted black olives, tins of mixed bean salad and boxes of mushroom soup sachets. Hanging from the front is a laminated sign. It reads: “20 for 20.” Below that it says: “20p for all Waitrose Essential.” Gary Stott, the stocky Lancastrian responsible for this offering, picks up a tin and waves it at me. “Our customers do like a bit of Waitrose.” He points to the notice at the bottom of the sign that reads: “So that we can be fair with all our members please buy one item each.” People keep to it, Stott tells me. “All our members understand the rules.”
Both the membership model and low prices are what distinguish the Community Shop, housed in a low-slung building on a tidy housing estate in Athersley, to the north of Barnsley in South Yorkshire. It is an example of a small but growing group of enterprises known as social supermarkets. If you meet the membership criteria, loosely based around the grinding struggle of low income and scarce resources, you are granted access to shelves of surplus food from mainstream retail outlets at major discounts.
Some of our food went to food banks. But the need was like a fire. And nobody was trying to put it out
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