Walking Dead star David Morrissey hailed the expansion of a depot for London’s largest food redistribution charity to help thousands more people in need.
The Sherwood actor volunteers with the Felix Project, that rescues high-quality surplus food from farms, food manufacturers and supermarkets before distributing it to around 1,000 community groups and schools across London.
He visited the charity’s Enfield depot to see the results of its refurbishment with freezers and more refrigerating space that means it can now store 500% more food in total than before - the equivalent of 90,000 meals a week.
The depot in Enfield is currently responsible for delivering 12,000 meals a week to 177 community organisations and schools across the boroughs of Enfield, Barnet, Haringey, Waltham Forest, North Hackney and Camden.
Enfield’s depot refurbishments means, with sufficient supplies of food, The Felix Project could deliver 4.5 million more meals in total a year.
The improvements mean 90 pallets of chilled food can be stored, representing 55.5 extra tonnes of food. The charity can now also store 18 pallets of frozen food, representing 13.5 tonnes of extra food.
Morrissey said: “Felix is already delivering millions of meals to people in London who need it. This gives it the capacity to deliver even more and to keep food sustainable for longer. And that’s what we need.
“I first started volunteering with The Felix Project because I thought the idea of saving food from going to waste and giving it to people in need was just such a simple and effective way to make difference. I am astounded by how the charity has grown and now how great this new depot is. I just hope they can get in even more food and volunteer support to ensure they can be there to feed more people.”
Felix was the partner charity of the Standard’s Food for London Now appeal that helped set up its social kitchen Felix’s Kitchen, where chefs take surplus food ingredients from the charity’s depot and turn them into meals.
The charity is also a beneficiary of our recent On the Breadline cost of living appeal that raised more than £4 million to help the most disadvantaged people across Britain.
The refurbishment was made possible by a number of funders including Ocado, who were at the event to celebrate.
The food retail giant supplied around 445 tonnes of food to The Felix Project in 2022 and donated money to enable the charity to do the work on the depot.
Charlotte Hill OBE, CEO of The Felix Project said: “The improvements are incredible, and we could not have done it without the generous support of so many organisations. The increased capacity means we are able store enough food to help thousands more people in London and crucially ensure we can freeze food, which can be used when surplus food supply is low.
“What is vital now is that we get new suppliers giving us their surplus, we have the room but not nowhere near enough food to fill it. We urgently need more food so we can be there for those facing hunger. Every single community organisation we supply is asking for more food and there are over 600 new organisations on our waiting list, many right here in North London, but we need more food before we can start to do anything to help.”
