Real Junk Food

Ed: So have you heard about the Skipchen?
Interviewer: No, I haven’t.
Ed: It is, where, you have food that’s been, just gone into the skips and we take it out.
Interviewer: OK, but it has been in the bin?
Ed: For a short while, yeah.
Interviewer: OK. But like, intercepted it on the way to the bin, which means it should have been in the bin and they’ve just taken it. What did you first think of the idea of it then?
Ed: I thought it was a good idea … a bit different … yeah.
Interviewer: But would you eat there?
Ed: Probably not, no.
Interviewer: Do you know what happens to the food we waste or like, how much we waste?
Ed: I dunno.
Interviewer: Or do you not think about that?
Ed: No, not really.
Interviewer: No?
Ed: I just eat it and then if it goes to waste don’t really think about it any more.
Interviewer: What’s the point in doin’ it all? Like, does it get many people in the restaurant or is it always empty?
Ed: I dunno. Erm, let’s go and find out.
Interviewer: Let’s go find out!
Sam: So, in the café we operate a completely pay as you feel … erm … system which means that people are free to pay whatever they see fit. We are really putting ourselves in the hands of the people but at the moment, people are paying and it does look as if we can succeed. As soon as we put a fixed price on something, then if we didn’t sell it, we’d be creating waste ourselves. The food that we … erm … source in the Skipchen comes from lots of different places … erm … we have deals with local restaurants and cafés and bakeries, we’ve got deals with chain restaurants, we’ve got deals with other food charities. We also take food that has been wrongly discarded by supermarkets, so when supermarkets have thrown food away, we will take that food as well. There is a huge amount of food waste in the world. It’s estimated that thirty to fifty per cent of the food we produce globally never makes it onto someone’s plate. It gets wasted. So that’s a good size meal per day per person that we’re wasting in this country. The Skipchen is staffed entirely by volunteers. I myself am a volunteer and everyone else who is involved are volunteers. There’s a big, big cohort of volunteers. Every day we have to come in and we have different stuff and sometimes we have, sometimes we have too much stuff and sometimes we have not enough so .. each … like .. it’s never simple. The type of people that … erm … eat at the Skipchen are really, really varied. Erm … the whole ethos and concept behind the, the café is to create spaces where people from different walks of life can come and share a meal regardless of what they’ve got in their wallets.
Customer 1: We had, like, a sausage stew, it was really tasty, like, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, like, really good, really good.
Customer 2: The food’s great! Yeah, really tasty and it tastes fresh as well.
Customer 3: Yeah I’m a regular actually, I mean I work two minutes down the road so I come here daily. Ha, ha. It saves me a lot on food bills.
Customer 2: What do I think about food waste? I think it’s, like, criminal, like the amount that we as a public manage to waste. And initiatives like this, projects like this, should be rolled out all over the country. It’s fantastic what they’re doing here.
Customer 3: Yeah, I’ll be back tomorrow most likely. Ha, ha.
Ed: So about the name, with the skip involved in the name, what … yeah … why did you put that?
Sam: A lot of us who started this movement, have, you, know, we’ve lived out of skips for years and years. Erm … now, now the food that’s actually in the Skipchen, like, most of it doesn’t come from skips cos we get it before it goes into the skips.
Ed: So what do I say about my friends who are doubtful about this?
Sam: I’d just tell them to, like, come down to have a chat and like we’re like, really open and we’ll, you know, talk to them about everything. They can, they don’t necessarily have to eat the food straight away they can come and just talk to us about where it’s from about like how we know it’s safe and like about and kind of see everyone else that’s eating here. But yeah it is difficult to change mindsets you know, because often, you know, the people that do come in they’re already converted they already understand and the people that kind of are a bit more fearful about it they won’t come in so, it is, it’s really difficult you know, it’s really difficult. If you come up with any, any ways of convincing your mates let me know cos that’d be great.
Ed: Things I learned about the Skipchen, it’s not all about … erm … the skip and how they get it from the skip it’s more about how they make the food and how it’s hygienic and how everything is done properly. And it’s a nice place to be and I think it’s a really good idea to start really. I learnt quite a lot about food waste in the process … erm … there’s not … there should be more done about it and there should be better laws about it.