For food emergency support, visit Shropshire Larder

Our Foodshares timetable

Community Kitchen:
Learn, Cook, Share!

Over the last two years, we’ve developed and delivered hands‑on cooking sessions with a wide range of community groups, creating a vibrant model that brings people together through food.

Working alongside our community group network and chef Steve Guy, we bring people together to gain skills and confidence in the kitchen –  but more importantly, to share food, spend time together and build community, all while saving good food from going to waste.

We also run in-house sessions where our team of volunteers tackle mountains of produce and veg on the edge, turning it into soup, sauces, cakes and crumbles – saving food and filling our community freezers. 

Download our Community Kitchen Booklet

Who do we work with?

Community Groups

We have some wonderful community groups working in and around our Shrewsbury. We work with many of these including Shrewsbury Men’s Shed, Shrewsbury Town FC Foundation and Harlescott Community Group.

Local Charities

We support many local charities in and around Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury Ark support people experiencing homelessness and the Food Hub have worked with them for many years with food and now with Community Kitchen initiatives. We also work with Domestic Abuse Network, Headway Shropshire, leaving care and refugee support groups.

Schools and Youth Clubs

We partner with primary schools, secondary schools, and youth clubs to run our Surplus Supper Sessions, where young people come together to enjoy delicious meals made from surplus food. Alongside the food, we deliver engaging workshops that explore the nonsense of food waste—why it happens, how it affects our world, and what each of us can do to reduce it. These sessions help children and young people understand the value of food and empower them to make positive, practical changes.

WorkWith Us

If you’d like to volunteer with us — or if your school, youth club, or community group would like to get involved with the Community Kitchen — click here to find out how you can be part of the change.

Contact Us Today!

On the Ground With Community Kitchen: Spring 2026 Round Up

Our Community Kitchen continues to go from strength to strength, bringing people together through the simple joy of food. More than just cooking, the programme is a vibrant hub of connection, learning, and support for our community.

Through hands-on sessions, we help improve health and wellbeing by building confidence in the kitchen and encouraging the use of a wider variety of ingredients. But the benefits go far beyond cooking skills — our sessions create meaningful social connections, boost confidence both socially and mentally, and empower people to make the most of the food they have. By reducing food waste and improving food preparation knowledge, we’re also helping households save money and stretch their budgets further.

The Community Kitchen is also making a real difference locally. We support community and charity groups with ready-prepared meals and ingredients, while creating a range of rewarding volunteering opportunities for people of all backgrounds.

A Busy and Productive Season 

May and June have been especially busy for our fantastic Community Kitchen volunteer team, who have been working tirelessly to make a real impact. On 28 May alone, they produced an incredible range of meals and prepped surplus produce that would otherwise have gone to waste, ready to be frozen and used another day.

Here’s just a snapshot of what they achieved:

  • 57 Pheasant & Veg Curries
  • 32 Curry Sauces
  • 54 Pots of Mash
  • 28 Bags of Cooked Frozen Spinach
  • 1 large crate of chillies prepped, chopped, and frozen

Supporting Our Community 

The positive impact reaches far and wide. We’re proud to have worked with Julie and the Grange Gang for over 10 years, building a strong and lasting partnership. At the start of June, we also ran a fun and hands-on pizza session with a youth club for children with additional needs. Using our trusty pizza oven, we prepared bases and created delicious toppings using fresh vegetables from the Hub — a fantastic experience for everyone involved.

Get Involved

Interested in finding out more about what we do? Visit our website to learn more about the Community Kitchen and the wider work of Shrewsbury Food Hub.

We’re always delighted to welcome new volunteers to help keep this wonderful programme running smoothly. If you’d like to get involved, please get in touch at [email protected].

New Year 2026

January 2026 kicked off with a herculean effort from our soupersonic team, who transformed surplus Christmas vegetables into hundreds of litres of delicious soup. These warming bowls have been enjoyed far and wide—at food shares, shared lunches with our brilliant corporate partners, tree‑planting and solar‑farm work parties, and at URC gatherings. A true community-powered feast!

We also launched brand‑new Community Kitchen sessions with fellas in temporary accommodation. Under the expert guidance of Chef Extraordinaire Steve, we’ve already cooked up a storm: a versatile fresh tomato base sauce, enchiladas, curry, bhajis, naan from scratch—and the latest triumph, hot water pastry for perfect beef pasties. The skills (and smiles!) just keep growing.

February has brought even more excitement as we’ve begun setting up our fully fledged kitchen in Unit 12. Huge thanks to Twig from I.G. Lewis Ltd for plumbing in our dishwasher, and to Liam from Sparkright for sorting out the electrics. We’re now busy rearranging the space ready for our new oven and extraction system. Once everything is PAT tested… the sky’s the limit!

So keep your eyes peeled—because fresh scones, cakes, and irresistible bakes are just around the corner.

Our community kitchen is GROWING!

We can see the difference we make in every session we run…

We have funding to keep doing what we’re doing until 2027. But we have the opportunity to create a permanent kitchen and café space rather than a mobile kitchen.

A permanent community kitchen space will help us to:

  • Increase sessions from one session per week to four.
  • Prevent more food from going to waste
  • Produce an additional 350 meals per week for our community freezer network.
  • Encourage long‑term behaviour change by demonstrating how to make the most of ingredients — both through social media and with direct participants.
  • Provide 18-30 new volunteering opportunities

Help us!

Help us create a permanent community kitchen by:

Donating time as a volunteer

Donating equipment 

Donating services 

Donating cash to make it happen

Donate or Contact Us Today!

Latest from the Hub

Check out our news and events to find out what we’re up to throughout the year and for helpful tips on how to reduce food waste.

Foodshares

Find out how we distribute food and when and where we'll be next.

News & Events

Discover about what we're up to and the events we have on.

Recipes

Try some of our delicious recipes that will feed you and help prevent food waste.

Food saving tips

Use our tips to make the most of your food, and save the environment.
Hub latest