Category: News

We’re keen to recruit an administration assistant to join our award-winning charity. We have a paid workforce of one full-time and two part-time members of staff, and a large team of sixty-five dedicated volunteers. We’re committed to preventing food waste by ‘rescuing’ good, nutritious food, which we then provide to seventy food banks and community groups in Exeter and all across Devon.  The administrative assistant will work with our manager, Wendy Kearns, to support staff and volunteers in day-to-day operations at our warehouse on Marsh Barton in Exeter, although it will also be possible by arrangement to work some of the time from home.

You can download a job description and person specification via this link or if you’d like to discuss the role with our manager, Wendy, she’d love to hear from you. You can reach her by phone on 07880 814064 or email: .

Triggered by the conflict in the Middle East, as the cost-of-living bites once again, with rising costs for energy and food, this week we took to the BBC Spotlight sofa to explain what it means for us. Just as for everyone else, it means that costs are increasing, at a time when many people are already struggling to get food on their tables and will now find it that little bit harder. We didn’t have long, just a few minutes in fact, but we did what we could to share our story, which is that we’ll be doing our level best, as we always do, to ensure that nobody ever has to go hungry, or choose between eating and heating. Thank you to everyone who supports our work. We couldn’t do what we do without you!

At the time of preparing this Spring 2026 issue we were enjoying a week of uninterrupted, wall to wall sunshine, although against the worrying backdrop of escalating conflict in the Middle East. There’s currently a fragile ceasefire but fears are growing that a prolonged conflict could significantly impact food prices, further exacerbating food insecurity, so the cost of living crisis is still with us.

In this issue we’ve dedicated several pages to resources that may be helpful for anyone struggling with food and fuel price rises and, of course, we’ll be doing everything we can to rise to these news challenges, working hard to tackle food waste and provide ‘rescued’ food to the now 70 community groups we support in Exeter and across Devon.

You can view or download the latest issue via this link or by clicking on the image below. Feel free to share with anyone who may be interested in news of our work.

NB If you downloaded a copy before the 19th of April, it’s since been updated to include some late news, as have the links on this page, which will now take you to the latest, updated issue.

How would you like to join our friendly, award-winning team as a driver/warehouse supervisor? We’d love to hear from you if so!

We’re a small charity with a big heart, employing one full-time and two part-time staff, with a dedicated team of sixty-five amazing volunteers, all of us committed to preventing food waste by ‘rescuing’ good, nutritious food, which we then provide to seventy food banks and community groups in Exeter and all across Devon. 

You can download a job description and person specification via this link or if you’d like to discuss the role with our manager, Wendy, she’d love to hear from you. You can reach her by phone on 07880 814064 or email: .

A big thank you to all of the wonderful supporters, volunteers and staff who played a part last year in enabling us to provide an amazing 114,651 kilograms of ‘rescued’ food to community groups in Exeter and all across Devon. Between all 70 of them, every week they got all that good, nutritious food, that might otherwise have gone to waste, to 1,000s of people who needed it.

As well as umpteen elephants, house bricks, shipping containers and concrete mixers, 114,651 kilograms of food is also equivalent to an incredible 272,979 meals, which we simply couldn’t have done without you. Thank you!

Exeter Food Action really couldn’t do what we do without our volunteers. We often describe them as our beating heart and we’re very fortunate to have 60 of them. Some volunteer in our warehouse, others help to deliver food to the 70 community groups we now support and, every day, several of them venture out all over the city collecting food from restaurants and supermarkets, preventing it from going to waste.

In recognition of the work that we do, earlier this week we won an award at the Exeter Sustainability Awards, as mentioned in a previous post.  The award goes to everyone who plays a part in our work which, of course, includes our amazing volunteers because, quite literally, they keep our wheels turning.

Our volunteers come from all walks of life, some working and volunteering in their spare time, others since retiring, and even some who’re still at school, such as Sibyle, pictured below with her mum, Emmanuelle. At 6 years old she’s our youngest volunteer and has been doing a wonderful job for over 2 years, collecting surplus food from Pret a Manger with mum. And when she’s not at school or volunteering, she’s apparently pretty good on a trampoline. Well, Sibyle, on behalf of Exeter Food Action, we’d just like to say that we’re jumping with joy at the great work that you do. Thank you – you’re a star!

PS Sorry, Sibyle, for what we’ve done to your face – we thought it best for you to remain anonymous in case people started pestering you for your autograph or you got so famous that you didn’t have time to be a volunteer. We need you!

In the 2024 Exeter Sustainability Awards category for community groups, charities and non-profits, we were delighted to be ‘highly commended’. This year, however, we went one better and are very pleased to report that we won!

There weren’t any speeches but, if there were, just as Oscar winners thank cast and crew (and mums, dads and dogs), in our case we’d have thanked our amazing staff and volunteers, because it’s the great work that they do that got us there. Congratulations all – we couldn’t do what we do without you!

Sometimes in our warehouse, as donations arrive and deliveries are packed before heading off to the many community groups we support, things can get a bit chaotic, with staff and volunteers vying for a bit of clear space to get things done. They always do but things will be made a bit easier now, thanks yet again to our good friends at Bartlett. The picture below shows Bartlett’s, Corinna (left) and our volunteer, Jo, beside the fabulous, shiny steel table they’ve donated for our warehouse. Thank you once again to Bartlett for their continued support for the work that we do!

Food insecurity in the UK has a gender dimension. Women, for example, are more likely than men to experience it, with 86% of single-parent households headed by women. We see every day how important support is for families under pressure, such as for the young mum who told us that the food we provided for a service she used ensured that her child ate, and she did too, prior to which she skipped meals so her child didn’t have to. Today, on International Women’s Day, we recognise and celebrate the strength of the women holding families together.

If you’d like to play a part by supporting our work, rescuing good food that might otherwise have gone to waste and getting it onto the tables of people who need it, it’s easily done. Please help if you can: https://exeterfoodaction.org.uk/donate. Thank you.

Back in January we posted news on our Facebook page that it was National Hugging Day, founded in 1986 by, Kevin Zaborney, a psychology major at the University of Michigan, USA. It was on the 21st of January, a date he’d chosen because it falls roughly midway between Christmas and Valentine’s Day, a time at which he believed people to be at an emotional low.

English reserve might have hindered things taking off in the UK, but we encouraged people to give it a go (with a hugee’s consent of course), or for them to simply express their affection for what we do, getting good food to people who need it, by making a donation. We’d urged people on saying “don’t be shy”, pointing out that it’s easily done. It still is if anyone feels like giving us a virtual hug: https://localgiving.org/charity/exeter-food-action.