Community Harvest: Repurposing quality café food for families in need

After moving to Millthorpe from the big city at the beginning of the year with her family, Michelle Slack-Smith found herself looking for community projects to get off the ground and occupy her time with since her travel business, Adventum Travel, had to be put on hold for the pandemic.

Michelle began talking with Jeremy and Juliet Norris, the owners of the Byng Street Group, where the idea for Central West Community Harvest began to take shape.

In their conversations, it was pointed out how much quality food goes to waste from cafés. Being a previous owner of a café in Sydney, Michelle knows all too well how much goes to waste.

“You feel sick with the amount of food that gets wasted, when it could be going to a family in need,” Michelle said.

“In the café market you can’t sell a muffin, a croissant, or a sandwich that’s three days old for five dollars – even if there’s nothing wrong with it unfortunately.”

In Sydney Michelle had access to the services of OZHarvest, Australia’s leading food rescue organisation in collecting quality food that can’t be used by cafés & restaurants and redistributing to disadvantage people.

Discovering there’s no charity or non-for-profit service like this in the Central West, Michelle decided to establish her own that’s inspired by OZHarvest’s framework.

The basis of Michelle’s idea would form into her own version of the framework, with volunteers going around to local participating cafés collecting their unwanted quality food and providing it to families in need.

Michelle pitched the idea over coffee to Juliet and Jeremy, who came on board with their Byng Street Group cafés donating the food, that includes the Byng Street Local Store, Bloom, Larder & Home and the Coffee Cart.

Momentum began to build until this current lockdown halted progress a little, however, volunteers have still been able to deliver food to families around Millthorpe and Orange.

“We would love to get more people on board from more cafés and volunteers. That would so great.”

If you’re interested in getting involved and providing a helping hand, give Michelle a call on 0407 279 301 or send a message via Instagram: www.instagram.com/centralwestcommunityharvest/