Leeds Community Shop Tackles Food Poverty

The first of its kind locally, the project is intended to offer heavily discounted groceries to address growing food insecurity within Leeds. The community shop takes a unique approach repurposing surplus Asda stock that would have been thrown away. Company Shop's executive chairman Garry Stott created this concept over a decade ago.

To ensure that fresh produce is available to struggling families the community shop has a 20p produce section all subsidized by the charity. The money earmed in the shop is then put into the community Kitchen which offers £1.50 meals to adults free food to kids. There is also a community hub that provides a number of support services to assist people with employment.

The Company Shop repurposed the "underused" Swarcliffe Community Centre in collaboration with the Leeds City Coucil. With plans to promote this and already existing initiatives in place according to the councillor for the Swarcliffe area, James Gibson.

He is confident this project will help the Swarcliffe Community to thrive.