Category: News

Huge thanks to everyone who helped make Exeter Food Action’s Food Festival in Princesshay Square on Sunday 20th September such a great success. It was a wonderful event promoting food waste reduction and raising awareness of our work through cookery demonstrations, kids’ activities, expert talks and more. Special thanks to Fresh Ground Films who made this lovely video showing highlights of the day, and to our partners and sponsors listed below, but also to everyone who played a part, including our wonderful volunteers. It was a great day!

Why not come along to Exeter Food Action’s Food Festival at Princesshay Square on Sunday 20th September? It’s a free community event promoting food waste reduction and raising awareness of our work through demonstrations, activities and community engagement.

We’ve a jam-packed line-up of informative, fun and educational sessions for all the family, including cookery demos, kids’ activities, expert talks and more. Check out the activities on the flyer below and, if you’d like to enter our competition, download and cut out the entry form via this link or by clicking on the image below. Bring your completed form to the festival for a Food Waste Hero Certificate and you’ll be entered into our prize draw for a £250 Amazon Voucher!

We hope to see you there!

The St Austell Brewery Charitable Trust has been supporting local charities, community causes and individuals in need across the South West since 2003, made possible thanks to contributions from the brewery, donations from their guests and the fundraising efforts of their head office, depots, pub teams and trade partners.

Today, we were very pleased to welcome the brewery’s Kirsty Hemmens, accompanied by a generous cheque for £2,500. We’re so grateful for their support, which is especially welcome as demand and costs for our service increases. Thank you to everyone who played a part. You made our day!

Our Summer 2026 issue of Food Matters can be viewed/downloaded by clicking on the image below. As well as the usual news of what we’ve been doing over the last few months and with thanks to the many people who support our work, it also features an urgent appeal. Unfortunately, we are navigating a particularly fragile financial period at the moment and a sudden combination of rising costs and funding shortfalls is putting severe pressure on our operations, making our future far more uncertain than it should be.

We currently await the outcome of over 40 fundraising applications to trusts and foundations, such is our determination to ensure that our service continues but, much as we don’t like having to ask, there’s no other way to put it than that we urgently need a helping hand. With immediate support from our community, we can bridge this gap and, as we always have, rise to the new challenges we face. Our full appeal is featured in the newsletter, which includes a link for anyone able to help. If you’re able to make a donation, however small, please follow this link. Thank you.

To view/download Food Matters, please click on the image below:

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: info@exeterfoodaction.org.uk.

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!