A year of collaboration has culminated in this Growing Community Food Enterprises toolkit, now available to any project wishing to make the step to become a food enterprise.
How can communities best respond to worsening food insecurity? Switching from food aid to food trade could be the key.
Strategies that don’t rely on charitable food aid can provide stability amid these turbulent times of funding uncertainty. That’s why Sustain have been working with the Food Partnership, local projects and other schemes across England to encourage food enterprises to grow.
The national project had 4 partner regions:
Thanks to the support from Greenwich Co-operative Development Agency (GCDA) and the Connect fund from Barrow Cadbury Trust, we were able to visit each others projects, share what was working, identify common challenges and identify the best tools for long-term financial and operational sustainability.

Over the last year, our peer group of local community food projects have taken part in learning workshops, businesses support, and constructed a fantastic good practice guidance resource. The toolkit was built to help other projects with similar aspirations to attract social investment from councils and housing associations.
The toolkit combines Sustain’s years of knowledge, GCDAs two decades of experience providing support to community food enterprises, and case studies from participating projects.
Included in the toolkit:
- How to use the toolkit
- Starting off
- Defining the need
- Making the change
- Products, services and operations
- Food supply
- Managing your finances
- Communications
This webinar accompanied the launch of the toolkit. The speakers take a deep dive into the resource and share candid stories from partner projects:
- Social enterprise training experts GCDA lay out the resources in the toolkit and how this can help food projects become more enterprising.
- In food deserts, it can be easier to put a bet on a horse than to buy an apple. Feedback Global speak about the innovative community food projects they support in Liverpool and how they work with the council and local housing associations. Their Queen of Greens mobile groceries bus now takes fruit and veg directly to 40 locations in Liverpool.
- Cook for Good explain how they developed a community-based food social enterprise in partnership with Peabody housing, business partners and local residents in London.
- The Real Farming Trust show how existing projects can start Linking Up Suppliers and Hubs (LUSH). With this model, you can utilise connections with customers and suppliers to generate revenue and food supply, with no need for a grant.