The Long Table is a pay as you can restaurant aimed at reducing food wastage and sourcing local produce.
As food prices continue to rise in the UK due to hyper-inflation for the last two years, the general population is facing food insecurity.
This year millions of children and adults alike are getting diagnosed with vitamin and mineral deficiencies and malnutrition.
Despite such terrible food shortage, the UK’s farms, businesses, and households throw away 9.5 million tonnes of edible food annually.
SIMILAR: Check out another unique restaurant in New York City which is run by Nanna’s.
The huge food wastage is gross injustice to the starving population and it also impacts the environment negatively. The food wastage leads to huge carbon emissions along with other costs of transporting and treating the same.
To resolve this issue, The Long Table restaurant was opened in Gloucestershire.
The non-profit organization was started on the pay-as-you-can model that allows its guests to eat and pay as much as they can or even for free.
The restaurant also wishes to save food meant for landfills by sourcing all its produce from local farmers and suppliers.
As per the restaurant’s general manager, Will North’s statement to The Guardian, they do not focus on the problems, but rather the solutions, while also being a real living wage employer.
They do not have any volunteers and all of their 22 part-time and full-time staff at the restaurant are earning the real living wage.
Last year, The Long Table saved about 3.4 million tonnes of food meant for the bins, and it was served to nearly 20,000 people at a low cost and even for free.
The eatery opens at 10 in the morning for coffee and cake, while also serving lunch for five days a week. Dinners are also served on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
Although everyone eats the same meal, the chefs at the eatery experiment with various cuisines as per the availability of ingredients while reducing waste.
As per North, “We are not pro-organic, anti-organic, pro-GM [or] anti-GM, we’re just pro-food.”
This year they haven’t received any grant from the government as all their profit comes from the guests who buy their coffee and drinks.
Because every extra dollar helps for someone who can’t buy themself a meal, they request the ones who can afford, to spend more.
As the name suggests, the restaurant does have long tables similar to those found in canteens, and they will happily provide extra tables and chairs if there are more patrons.
The morally upright restaurant aims to encourage people with its unique ideas.
They do not intend to become millionaires from it, but they are surely displaying that it is possible to exist and flourish on limited resources.
The Guardian also revealed that two brand-new eateries based on the same idea are about to open soon, one in Falmouth and one in Cirencester.
