On 4 and 5 July, the FareShare North East team headed to the Festival of Thrift in Kirkleatham, Redcar, joining thousands of visitors for a weekend celebrating creativity and community action.

From pre-loved fashion and local traders to hands-on workshops, the festival showcased practical ways people can live more sustainably. We were delighted to be part of it, with our own stall and a series of Love Food, Hate Waste cooking workshops delivered in partnership with Nourish Food School.

Across the weekend, our Head Chef, Gemma, joined David from Nourish Food School to demonstrate a simple, delicious recipe – Korean-style beans on toast!

The recipe uses ingredients many people already have in their cupboards. Even better, every ingredient used in the demonstrations came directly from our warehouse, highlighting how easy it can be to reduce food waste at home while creating affordable and nutritious meals.

You can find the tasty recipe here on Nourish Food School’s website.

Our stall also gave us the chance to speak with visitors about FareShare North East’s work redistributing surplus food across the region. Alex Young, our Partnerships Manager, said: “The best part of the weekend was talking to visitors. It was brilliant to share our mission and connect with so many like-minded people who care about making good food go further.”

She added that many visitors also joined our surplus cooking workshops across the weekend, showing just how keen people are to learn easy, practical ways to save money, reduce waste and create delicious meals from surplus food.

We were also pleased to provide of surplus drinks and snacks for festival volunteers, including fruit, cereal bars, biscuits, and tea, to help to keep the team fuelled as they made the event such a success.

Overall, it was a fantastic weekend filled with great conversations, new connections and plenty of enthusiasm for reducing food waste. A huge thank you to everyone who stopped by our stall or joined a workshop. We look forward to returning next year!