We’re totally pay as you can’: the UK restaurant prioritising people and planet

The Long Table in Gloucestershire is a not-for-profit that rescues food waste, sources local produce and pays the real living wage

AGloucestershire restaurant is rethinking relationships with customers, suppliers and the entire food economy to fuel an ambitious “pay as you can” model that feeds allcomers, regardless of ability to pay.

In the past year, The Long Table has fed about 20,000 people at below-cost price – many for no charge at all, no questions asked – while rescuing 3.4 tonnes of food destined for the bin and paying local suppliers fair prices for the rest.

It has also made enough money to employ 22 part-time and full-time members of staff on at least the real living wage – no work is done by volunteers – and hopes to replicate the model elsewhere.

“We are, at our simplest, a restaurant,” says Will North, The Long Table’s general manager. “But really what we are is an amazing restaurant where we prioritise being a real living wage employer, [and] we prioritise the kinds of suppliers who not only prioritise [the] planet, but people as well.

“But then what we do is, rather than charge for that, all of our meals are totally pay as you can. There is never any expectation to pay for it. That’s the risk that we take.”

An estimated 8 million adults and 3 million children are facing food insecurity in the UK in 2024 – twice the rate in 2021. After rampant inflation over the past two years, the cost of food has risen by a quarter, and with healthier options costing an average of twice as much per calorie, hospitals have seen an alarming rise in admissions for vitamin and mineral deficiencies and malnutrition, diagnoses doctors have described as rooted in poverty.

Yet every year the UK’s farms, businesses and households, especially, throw away 6.4m tonnes of edible food, enough to feed everyone three meals a day for 11 weeks, says the climate action NGO Wrap.

Aside from the injustice of food being thrown away while children go to bed hungry, such waste has a huge impact on the climate and the wider environment. Taking into account agriculture, manufacture, packaging, distribution, retail, transport, storage and preparation costs, followed by waste treatment and disposal, food waste accounts for approximately 18m tonnes of carbon emissions each year.

The Long Table tackles these interlinked issues at the same time. But it prefers not to focus on problems, says North. “We hold a space where we are all collectively trying to answer a question: what if everyone in our community had access to great food and people to eat it with?”

As befits the name, diners at The Long Table sit together at long, canteen-style tables, in an atmosphere North describes as “radical hospitality”. The restaurant, which operates alongside a bicycle recycling workshop and a secondhand furniture warehouse, opens at 10am for coffee and cake. Lunch is served from noon, five days a week, with dinners also served on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

A typical lunch service feeds between 100 and 250 people, says North. “And it’s the kind of place that if you came and there wasn’t a seat at the table, we would bring out more tables.”

Everyone eats the same meal, but that doesn’t leave chefs without room to experiment. Recent dishes include dal with honey-glazed carrots, served with fresh flatbreads, and a savoury bread and butter pudding in a sauce flavoured with blue cheese. On Saturday, the restaurant served lasagne, cooked by its co-founder Tom Herbert and his brother, Henry, both noted chefs who formerly co-presented a TV cookery show.

Menus are determined by whatever ingredients are available, sourced on the basis of minimising waste, where possible using surplus raw ingredients, preferring local suppliers and seasonality. Much comes from Fareshares, the national charity that redistributes surplus food, with the rest sourced from local producers.

“We’re not pro-organic, anti-organic, pro-GM [or] anti-GM, we’re just pro-food,” says North. “But it just so happens that our local producers really prioritise the planet over anything else.”

Reliance on surplus means meat is rarely offered at The Long Table, but the principles around the meat it does source is indicative of its approach. “We have a rule that any animal that we buy we have to have touched,” says North. “So that means we follow it from producer to abattoir to butcher.”

Except for mutton, none of the animals it cooks has been raised for slaughter. The last cow used in the restaurant had come from the National Trust’s wildflower-meadow conservation scheme, and it was only after she had reached 11 years old and had arthritis that she entered the food chain.

The restaurant is only part of The Long Table’s work. At the height of the Covid pandemic, with support from local church authorities and the national lottery, it distributed 1,000 pre-cooked frozen meals a week, from a network of 20 freezers across Gloucestershire, with three-quarters given to the most needy at no charge.

That campaign continues on a smaller scale now that people can meet to eat together and the focus has shifted to supporting other communities to host their own pay-as-you-can cafes, paying the cost of the food and wages of the cooks. Spin-off cafes have fed as many as 6,000 people in the past year, says North, and while The Long Table foots the bill, the communities running the cafes receive 100% of the donations.

The Long Table can achieve all of this because of its business structure and model. Formed as a not-for-profit community interest company, it draws income from its sales and activities. This financial year, it drew no grant funding at all.

“We turn over just about £500,000 a year. Next year, it should be about £550,000; and we spend about £550,000 on doing it,” says North. Losses on food, with about half of diners paying less than cost price, are mitigated by takings from the cafe and bar, and from the steady income provided by subscriptions.

It puts The Long Table in a strong position to face the future. A plan is under way to replicate the model in Cirencester, while a restaurant in Falmouth has plans to adapt and adopt a version.

“We are showing people in the food industry [what] could be a future of what the food world looks like,” says North. “But it’s only the future if you don’t want to become a millionaire while doing it.”

Cover photo: By THE GUARDIAN