Food clubs are a dignified, preventative response to food insecurity

Food clubs across England are responding to food insecurity by improving access to food and supporting healthier, more stable lives, according to our evaluation of varying food club models funded by Sainsbury’s and Comic Relief.

Sainsbury’s and Comic Relief’s Nourish the Nation programme supports a variety of organisations that work to tackle food insecurity, including three delivery partners (Feeding Britain, The Bread and Butter Thing and FoodSavers Network) that are focused on expanding the food club model to improve access to nutritious, affordable food for low-income communities across the UK, offering a dignified and preventative alternative to food banks. 

Alongside affordable food access, the model also integrates wraparound support such as welfare advice, financial services and community activities. 

Using a participatory evaluation approach, we worked closely with members and volunteers at Feeding Britain, The Bread and Butter Thing and FoodSavers Network to ensure their experiences and perspectives shaped our understanding of the difference food clubs can make.

We found that food clubs provide a dignified, community-based response for individuals and families experiencing food insecurity and that they offer a preventative alternative to emergency food provision, helping to build resilience.

Positive impacts were seen at both individual and community levels, including improved wellbeing and stronger social connections.

Ryan Wise, member of the Tavistock Institute evaluation team, said: ‘Food clubs help households stretch limited budgets, improve access to nutritious food, provide a welcoming space for social connection and create pathways to wider support services’.

The evaluation identifies practical insights into what works and how food clubs could be scaled sustainably. To enable investment into components of the service like welfare advice, some food clubs could look at covering the food costs through member contributions, allowing external grant funding to be ring-fenced to pay for ‘value-add’ elements like professional staffing and wrap-around support. 

Some of the access barriers identified in the evaluation could be tackled through trialling or extending evening/weekend access for those in work, and diversifying purchasing beyond generic surplus to include culturally specific staples for racially minoritised communities. 

Operating multiple smaller satellite distribution points from a central hub could also help overcome transport barriers in both rural and large urban areas. 

Funders could support the financial viability of food clubs through supply side innovations, like facilitating ‘cost-price’ wholesale purchasing channels.

There is also a strategic opportunity to support food clubs to raise the profile of the model and build the business case for multi-year local authority commissioning, embedding the service into the national social safety net going forward. 

‘Making the case for food clubs is critical to secure their future and we hope our evaluation provides helpful evidence to support clubs, funders and commissioners in planning for the future’, said Dr Thomas Spielhofer, lead author of the evaluation at the Tavistock Institute.

He added: ‘The critical missing link in the preventative evidence base is understanding long-term destinations: we need to figure out to what extent food club members graduate to increased financial independence or cycle back into crisis.’