Food Assembly has been announced as a finalist in the ‘Best Food Initiative’ category of the BBC Food Awards
With over 500 members in Frome, The Food Assembly aims to change food culture in the UK by allowing people to buy directly off farmers and local foodmakers.
Every week Food Assembly customers in Frome can order food online from their local Assembly before picking it up at a weekly popup market. All the food comes from within 100 miles of the area.
Each Assembly creates paid work for a local host. The Frome Assembly is hosted by food obsessed new mum Pia McGee in the Frome Memorial Theatre, where customers can collect food from local producers like Vallis Veg and The Cooks of Country Markets.
Pia said, “There’s a whiff of food revolution in the air. Supermarket shopping isolates people buying food from those producing it. Frome wants to ‘shake the hand that feeds us’.”
Sheila Dillon, presenter of Radio 4’s ‘The Food Programme’ and host of the awards said, “I’ve never before felt so strongly that food and farming are changing the UK. Many of the best, most entrepreneurial, engaged minds are now in the food business.”
The average farmer in the UK receives 7% of the retail price when supplying through conventional supply chains such as supermarkets, compared with 83.3% through Food Assemblies.
Winners will be announced at a ceremony held in Bristol on Thursday 30th April 2015.
