For discussion of cooking and cleaning operations
Ciara and I are chatting to Shiri from Cooperation Kentish Town about a possible free food supplier called Fare Share. Discussion tonight but this will help a lot with ingredient costs though obviously we’ll have other costs like fuel for delivery drivers, containers and heating elements for the food, any surplus ingredient we need and cleaning supplies (if they don’t do them).
Report from call with Shiri:
She suggested we could use an org called Fare Share who can give us free food. What they give would be fairly random but we can set up an account with them and chat to them about our needs. They do have a £150 set up cost for their cool boxes to keep the food in which is a bit of a bummer and we’d need to consider this cost and weigh it up against getting the food itself for free. This is their website: https://fareshare.org.uk/
I think one advantage is we could use the account to help BCS as well as the food could all get dropped at the cafe, we take what we can use for the cooking and meals provision, and then they can take the surplus and distribute it. That would be my proposal.
I think we need to discuss this in the meeting tomorrow.
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I think it all seems very promising apart from the cool box cost.
I’m getting in touch with The Real Junk Food Project so we can see what they say as well.
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Wouldn’t we need cool boxes anyway? That’s not a high cost, we could cover that I reckon. We will need food storage and delivery things like that anyway apparently.
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Hi all! Ciara, please, before you and Paul go to Bookers tommo, could we first think of cleaning products that we’d need and make a list so we can be sure you’ll get everything we need? If we write the list of essential products here it could be used later on if anybody else would go to do shopping 
Thanks!
This is quite important piece of information regarding the novel coronavirus/coronaviruses in relation to food.
How long does the virus last on food?
The data for how long the virus can remain viable on food is limited, but in general, viral loads remain more stable on non-porous surfaces like metal and plastic, and break down faster on organic surfaces like cardboard.
Can I get COVID-19 from touching or eating contaminated food?
There is currently no evidence that COVID-19 has spread through food or food packaging.
Are we sure food isn’t a vector of COVID-19 transmission?
No, we don’t know for sure. However, there is strong evidence to suggest that food is not a vector. The epidemiology of food-borne pathogens is well studied, with government data going back to 1938. The spread pattern of COVID-19 does not fit models of foodborne outbreaks, which are defined as two or more people getting sick from the same contaminated food or drink.
For instance, Singapore has tracked its COVID-19 patients and submitted them to extensive interviews by teams from the Ministry of Health to try to determine patterns of spread. It’s been found that most cases are linked to clusters of people, including hotel guests attending conferences, church groups, and shoppers, while none are linked to contaminated food or drink.
The fact that every person eats multiple times a day and thus far no link has been found between eating and viral clusters is strong evidence that no such link exists.
I’m still not convinced. How could food not be a vector?
Let’s say a food worker coughs while preparing my food, how could I not pick up the virus from eating it? This confused me as well, which is why I specifically inquired about it. According to Chapman, the risk is minimal. Even if a worker sneezes directly into a bowl of raw salad greens before packing it in a take-out container for you to take home, as gross as it is, it’s unlikely to get you sick.
This 2018 overview of both experimental and observational study of respiratory viruses from the scientific journal Current Opion in Virology (COVIRO) explains that respiratory viruses reproduce along the respiratory tract—a different pathway than the digestive tract food follows when you swallow it. And while you might say that you just inhaled that salad, more likely you ate it with a fork and swallowed it
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/blogs/p/2020/03/21/food-safety-and-coronavirus-a-comprehensive-guide
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Okay I signed up for Fareshare, I’ll let you know when the contact me.