Dr. Connally is the Managing Director of Cherwell Collective. In this piece, she reflects on the teething pains of scaling up community food services to meet ever-increasing demands.  

“I spent this summer in the US caring for my mother on an unplanned and extended trip. Meanwhile, our long-term cook resigned unexpectedly at the end of June. Her replacement had only three weeks to pull together our Oxfordshire free school meal program, now serving three times as many children as we had fed during the Easter holidays. This blog post is a summary of that journey and a reflection on how our community, once again, came together.” 

Oxfordshire Free School Meal Services

For those who don’t know, Climatarian Kitchen cooks surplus meals and makes them available to all in need through a pay-what-you-can donation-based system. We operate every Thursday from 11 to 2 at Exeter Hall, Kidlington, and Fridays and Saturdays at our Waste Innovation Station Headquarters (WISH), Kidlington. You can also collect surplus from Cherwell Larder Marketplace during these times. There are no questions asked and no minimum donation. 

During school holidays, we host family activities alongside our nutritious meals, benefitting over 1,000 people in the last three years. Our free school meal services on location typically only benefit residents of Kidlington and surrounding villages, but this year, we plan to expand county-wide. 

A woman in a blue bandana, glasses and an apron over her pink t-shirt stands in a professional kitchen. She is holding a tray of freshly baked muffins, to be delivered as part of the free school meals project
One of our Climatarian Kitchen chefs preparing freshly baked goods

In April 2024, I saw a Facebook ad posted by Jennifer Brooks, General Manager of Elite Youth Sports, Ltd. Elite delivers holiday sports camp programs at eight locations each year for hundreds of children. As part of this provision, they reserve spaces for the  Holiday and Food (HAF) scheme – a Department of Education initiative – whereby students who receive free school meals during term time have reserved spaces at camps around the nation providing physical activity, education, and food free of cost. 

Inflation Has Squeezed the HAF Program

The HAF program provides enrichment and nutrition to millions of students during school holidays and is a celebrated achievement providing for the vulnerable. However, inflation has seriously outpaced the government’s HAF budget, with the cost of goods like basic cooking ingredients increasing over 20 percent since HAF policies were written in 2018, and overall inflation increasing to 11 percent in 2022, the highest level in over 40 years in the UK . 

Inflation squeezes local businesses hardest, including businesses like small cafes and catering companies which are largely the type that service the HAF program. During the spring, Elite was desperately looking for someone who could provide meals for two of their camps. At that time local cafes were struggling with costs, and therefore had pulled out of agreements. I volunteered Climatarian Kitchen, knowing it would be a tremendous amount of work, but also understanding how much support our community needs at this time. 

We took on two sites beyond our usual offerings in Kidlington: Witney and Grove. Logistics were a bit complicated, because the food needs to arrive at the same time at both locations no matter the traffic. Moreover, it must arrive hot.  Despite a steep learning curve, our trial at Easter was a success, with drivers willing to return in the summer and Elite asking us to take on two more camps, for a new total of four, providing to at least 40 children per day. That was doable, but there were some considerations.  

Two large glass dishes of rice and two large glass dishes of yellow curry sit on top of a steel kitchen work surface
Freshly prepared meals ready to be packaged and delivered

Challenges and Barriers to Implementation

Because Climatarian Kitchen serves 75 percent plant-based food, it can be difficult to align with school meal requirements for protein and meat content. We use surplus and it’s sometimes impossible to predict what will be available. On top of that, children are sometimes rather fussy. 

Our Easter menu was designed by three international chefs: me, a chef from Romania, and a chef from Saudi Arabia. The food we and our families love was not always popular with the holiday camps. In my house, bean quesadillas are a weekly staple but – I’m not sure most UK schoolchildren even know what they are!

Therefore, after Easter, we spoke with other providers and designed a new menu. Provisions included pasta and pizza, and making chicken fingers from scratch alongside sausage rolls. We started preparing and freezing what we could for those menus as soon as the ingredients came in. Unfortunately, a storm surge caused a failure impacting three freezers. Poof, all that work was gone. 

Simultaneously, Elite lost another caterer. As Elite provides services at no cost to families, its budget to reimburse meal providers is limited. This means margins are tight – too tight, in fact, for most for-profit kitchens. Since Climatarian Kitchen merely looks to break even and cover our costs, we offered to take on the two additional sites previously covered by Elite’s other caterer. A good businessperson would perhaps have chastised me at this point for taking on six total sites. But how could I say no and leave those kids unfed?  

This thought just kept worming its way in: 
What if the food we send is all a child will eat that week? 

“It Takes a Village”

We had over 150 meal delivery trips needing drivers. One week before the program was due to start, a new series of tragedies struck one right after the other: One of our long-term drivers had to pull out because of a terminal illness in his family. Another one of our drivers got a great job and had to start immediately. A third driver’s car broke down! It appeared to be Murphy’s Law in action. 

In my time of need, I reached out to the original Cherwell heroes, those people who, during COVID, delivered hundreds of food parcels a week from Kidlington to Banbury. I felt rude asking them to help again. Some had not heard from me in two years. So many had moved on. 

But that thought continued to echo in my mind: 

“What if the food we send is all a child will eat that week?” 

Some volunteers could take two slots here, some four slots there, and some every Thursday. We started to fill in the rota again, bit by bit and one by one. 

To my great surprise and relief, even BBC Radio superstar Sophie Law and producer Cristina Parry ran a piece about Climatarian Kitchen’s free school meals and took on delivery slots! 

A smiling woman with shoulder length straight blonde hair and black glasses smiles at the camera. she is sat in the driver's seat of a car, showing the camera a food delivery parcel next her which she is about to deliver.
BBC’s Sophie Law doing a voluntary delivery for Climatarian Kitchen

After that, all of a sudden, we even had backup drivers. Contrary to Easter, when we had the same drivers for each site for the program, this summer, each driver made less than one delivery a week on average.  This summer, dozens of people did what they could, with no effort being too small, to feed these kids. 

The Impact of Sharing Resources

We had planned for 60 meals a day, but for most of the summer, we delivered over 100 meals daily. With the freezer failure, we found ourselves running out of food, and short of just about everything, including dishes and insulated carrier bags. Shout out to Riki at Botley Fridge for saving our skin and letting us borrow her bags until we could procure more! 

We ran out of beans for jacket potatoes on day one. We ran out of yogurt on day three, and then peas on day four. There was only one place I could call: Savona Foodservice. I try not to ask them often, but our regular readers will know Savona as an incredible community partner, and this summer they saved us again. 

There are no words to describe the gratitude we have for Savona. They not only share surplus via their long-term donations to our supplier, Oxford Food Hub, but also come through when we have nowhere left to turn, when our staff is working nonstop, and when our volunteers are exhausted, to share what they have with those in need. Savona sponsored the Oxfordshire school meal program, providing ingredients to fill the gaps in surplus for meals cooked and delivered by Climatarian Kitchen to Elite summer camps. 

Historically, our kitchen has served an average of 1,000 meals a month for four years, and this is the first time we’ve run out of supplies like this. Many of you might think it’s nothing for Savona to share a small portion of their giant stock line with a kitchen like ours.

To me, it was everything because that thought just kept wiggling in:

“What if the food Savona shared was all a child would eat that week?” 

large glass dishes filled with freshly sliced vegetables sit on top of a steel kitchen work surface
Lovely vegetables, freshly prepared at Climatarian kitchen

How You Can Help

We are looking ahead to half-term and Christmas holidays and having daily hot meals available at WISH. We will need a few volunteers to help. If you are available for even an hour a month, please contact pa.cherwellcollective@gmail.com.

If you’re able, donations to support our continued community services are greatly appreciated. You can donate to our food services directly here. If you’re broadly interested in joining our community of incredible volunteers, please register your interest by filling out this form. We are always thrilled to have new people join our forces, but now more than ever, some extra helping hands will be greatly appreciated.

a man with a shaved head wearing an apron looks happy as he stirs a large silver cooking pot on a stove
One of our wonderful Climatarian Kitchen chefs cooking up a storm

Why Take On These Logistical Challenges?

Our mission is to provide a safe space, open to all, to connect with one another and build climate resilience through sharing resources. At times like these I am always humbled by how many people are willing to help, and all we need to do is ask.

In the past, I’ve been criticized for not limiting Cherwell Collective’s support to residents of Kidlington parish. This summer, we did indeed feed children far from our village. I will say it again, and you have heard it before: 

All people need food to live. 

What if the food we send is all our neighbour’s child will eat that week? 

Our drivers and deliveries stretched from Kidlington to Bicester and Witney and Thame, to Grove and Abingdon and Botley. Each person volunteered an average of four hours over five weeks. Together we served over 2,500 hot meals to vulnerable children. 

Lots of people doing a little bit is precisely how our village helped feed the county. 


That is the power of the Collective.