Improving access for everyone in the city to healthier, affordable and more sustainable food

Gary Smith

I graduated from Southampton Solent University in 2006 and have worked in retail and hospitality ever since. In 2019 I started working at Southampton University Students’ Union (SUSU), where I am currently Head of Social Enterprise. SUSU is a charity and my areas – the bars, cafes and shop – are there to give students great experiences while also generating income to support the aims of the Students’ Union.

I have also recently become a co-opted member of the Outer Avenue Residents’ Association (OARA) committee. OARA aims to foster community spirit in the Outer Avenue roads of Southampton, which includes helping students who live in the area to feel at home while respecting their neighbours.

For the last year or so, I have also been privileged to be involved in the Southampton Food Partnership, attending the inaugural meeting in June 2024.

I grew up in Chandlers Ford, so have always been local to Southampton and spent a lot of time in my college years at the Joiners attending gigs. Having spent six years working at the Students’ Union, and through living in the city and my involvement with OARA and the food partnership, I see a lot to be proud about and real potential in Southampton.

In my role at the Students’ Union, I work with my teams to try and deliver a food offer that our students will love and can afford, but that is also more than just a sandwich or a burger. We have been looking into how we can do food more sustainably, in every sense of the word, and what our impact is on our local community and the wider world.

We’ve introduced carbon foot-printing of our food menus and have changed to what we consider to be the most sustainable coffee supplier. When the opportunity came up to join the food partnership, I felt it would be a great chance to meet other people who had a passion for food in the local area. It seemed a good way of learning from them and creating a network that could benefit all of us, and hopefully the city. I felt it was important that the 25,000 students at the University of Southampton were represented in the partnership.

Southampton Food Partnership’s vision is to become recognised as an exemplary food system that protects and improves person and planetary health.Our aim is to improve access for everyone in the city to healthier, affordable, sustainable food – making food fair for everyone.

As a partnership organisation, our role is to connect people across the city. While it’s difficult to quantify the ripple effect of the connections we make possible, we share partner case studies which inspire and catalyse wider partnership actions and collaborations.

One example of this demonstrates how SUSU encouraged students and staff to ditch disposable cups when buying drinks from our outlets. By increasing the levy charged on single use cups from 25p to £1 and adapting our coffee and pastry breakfast deals, so they were only available when purchasing a drink in a reusable cup, we saw reusable cup usage rise to 27.5% of all hot drinks sold. This means we have avoided using around 13,500 single use cups and seen a 1,300% growth in the use of reusables, as well as continued growth in sales of hot drinks.

By ringfencing the revenue from the levy scheme, we were able to launch sustainability initiatives with Klimato to measure the CO2 impact of each of our menu items. We also switched our coffee supplier to Bird & Wild shade-grown coffee in support of the RSPB, without having to raise coffee prices.

We have achieved so much since forming Southampton Food Partnership in July 2024, including endorsement and support from Southampton Health and Wellbeing Board and being granted Sustainable Food Place membership status. We have gained over 90 members across more than 40 organisations, and we’ve won 100% of the grants we applied for, including New Things Fund 2024 and Public Engagement with Research 2024/25.

Southampton Food Partnership is an inclusive partnership of public, private, charitable and community sector members, with 90 members across more than 40 organisations. If you are working with or through any partner organisations to help achieve your objectives, do get in touch to see how we can help. You can find out more on our website: www.sustainablefoodplaces.org and on Instagram @sotonfoodpartnership.