Rosie Boycott presents inaugural Urban Food Awards

As part of a drive to celebrate the capital’s thriving and diverse food scene, the Urban Food Awards saw 80 small food enterprises enter and more than 2400 Londoners vote to shortlist the finalists. A panel of expert judges then selected the following winners:

Best Producer – Organiclea
Organiclea Community Growers proves that you don’t need rolling fields of green to produce fantastic fruit and veg sold via weekly market stalls and a box scheme. Highlights include a wide variety of salad leaves (72 varieties produced last year); heritage tomatoes; 43 chilli varieties and production of the Walthamstow yellow cress. This workers’ cooperative offers training and employment opportunities.

Best Retailer - Brockley and Wapping Markets
Brockley Market and its newer sibling in Wapping have quickly established themselves with a loyal customer base, showcasing artisan products and small producers.

Best Eatery - Stepney City Farm Café
(award sponsored by Seeds of Change)
Chef Joe Fennerty transforms produce from the city farm into affordable delicacies. Sweet woodruff ice-cream, elderflower cordial and pickled mustard leaves are just some of the delights he has created. All the café’s bread is made from traditional recipes and the farm’s pigs are fed on waste material from local businesses. The farm works with closely the local community and has a successful track record in helping volunteers back into work.

Best Educator - Made in Hackney
Made in Hackney claims proudly that it’s the capital’s only 100% plant-based diet community kitchen. It’s social enterprise model sees income ploughed back into a healthy eating and cooking programme for local people. 

The People’s Choice Award – Crisis Skylight Café
The judges created this special award in recognition of the huge number of votes Londoners cast for Crisis Skylight Café, and the brilliant work the enterprise does. Recently renovated, the café has offered training and employment opportunities to more than 200 homeless people and ex-offenders, with income from the food and drink they sell helping to fund this programme. Bringing the people it helps face to face with customers every day, the café helps to break down stigma and create an inclusive local community.

Presenting the awards, judging panel chair Rosie Boycott said:

‘Congratulations to all Urban Food Award winners and those who were in the running. This is all about celebrating the extraordinary variety of London’s food sector, championing those who also go out of their way to put something back into the communities they work in. As judges we were blown away by the quality and diversity entries. These are enterprises that are providing great grub, often from ingredients produced locally, whilst also delivering a huge range of added extras including employment and volunteering opportunities for Londoners.’

Other awards presented at the gourmet gala at Whole Foods Market on High Street Kensington, which supported the event, were:

London Markets Initiative Krys Zasada Memorial Award - Kingston Ancient Market
To unlock the potential of Kingston’s Ancient Market, it was redesigned and the variety of its produce was increased. A pop-up element was added to ensure its offering remains fresh and to provide entrepreneurs with somewhere to test innovative retail ideas. The landscape was redeveloped to create a piazza-style space that is now a vibrant hub for the community. This revitalisation along with the new brand, website, social media campaign and magazine has resulted in a surge in footfall to both the market and retail outlets around it.

Capital Growth Enterprise  - Growing Kultur
Growing Kultur is a stand out example of what one person’s hard work, creativity and growing skill can achieve. Alexandra Charlemagne has steadily built up a customer base for her fresh produce and herbal teas grown on a small plot in West London. Judges were impressed by her Urban Food Fortnight collaboration with Sipsmith, making indulgent botanical gin cocktails as well as her healthy, homemade vegetarian catering business and dried herbal remedies. Alexandra works tirelessly to progress her growing enterprise and should be recognised for her small yet successful business. Growing Kultur operates on a small scale but watch this space as Alexandra plans to take on more land next year, good news for us all!

Capital Growth Enterprising School Garden - Nightingale Primary School, Hackney
(award sponsored by Bulldog Tools and The Organic Gardening Catalogue)
Nightingale Primary School Hackney which has achieved an impressive amount of work around growing and enterprise in just one year, with the help of a Capital Growth ‘Growing Leader’.

Good Food For London Best Borough - London Borough of Islington
For the fourth year in a row, Islington Borough Council has topped the league table in the Good Food For London report, published by London Food Link, part of the food and farming charity Sustain. This annual survey shines a light on local authorities taking straightforward and significant steps to improve food in their borough. Islington again demonstrated strong leadership to improve food in the borough, with action being taken on all nine issues represented, including this year achieving the Gold Food for Life Catering Mark for school meals.

The Urban Food Awards were established to celebrate the success of small, good food enterprises, with the goal of going beyond having sound business models and turning out tasty tucker. As such, entrants were asked to highlight ways in which they: produce or use more sustainable food; offer social benefits to people in their local communities; contribute to the local economy; and enhance the health of people and our environment more generally. Entries for The Urban Food Awards 2015 will open next summer.

The Urban Food Awards are part of Urban Food Routes, an initiative funded by the Mayor of London and Seeds of Change, which provides grants and expert advice to small food enterprises in London to help them thrive and benefit people in their local communities. The support is coordinated by the Plunkett Foundation, with help from Growing Communities and London Food Link.

Read more about Urban Food Routes at www.urbanfoodroutes.org.uk

**ENDS**

For media enquiries about the Urban Food Awards, please contact Chris Young at London Food Link: chris [at] sustainweb.org  or 0203 5596 777

For more information about Urban Food Routes, please contact Monica Dolan at Plunkett Foundation: monica.dolan [at] plunkett.co.uk  or 01993 810730

NOTES

The Urban Food Routes partners are:

The Plunkett Foundation is an active supporter of the community food sector, and since 2007 has helped over 1,900 community food enterprises, primarily through the Making Local Food Work programme, including The People’s Supermarket and Growing Communities in Hackney. www.plunkett.co.uk

The London Food Board is an advisory group of independent food policy organisations and experts which oversees the implementation of The Mayor of London’s Food Strategy: Healthy and Sustainable Food for London, published in 2006 (and referred to here as the London Food Strategy) and to co-ordinate work and lead the debate on sustainable food issues in the Capital.
www.london.gov.uk/priorities/business-economy/working-in-partnership/london-food-board/london-food-board

Seeds Of Change® began as a small organic seed farm in the USA in 1989 with a simple mission: "To preserve biodiversity and promote the use of sustainable organic agricultural practices." Since then it has grown into a successful organic food business, with a range of cooking sauces, pasta sauces, pasta and rice and grains products, available across the UK. Seeds of Change is part of Mars Incorporated, a family-owned business established in 1911 across six business units employing more than 72,000 associates worldwide that are putting its Principles into action to make a difference for people and the planet through its performance.
www.seedsofchange.co.uk

London Food Link network is part of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming. Its initiatives include Capital Growth network of food gardens, Urban Food Fortnight, The Big Dig, FoodSave, Capital Bee, Sustainable Fish City, The Good Food For London Report, and a new project to tackle food poverty. LFL publishes The Jellied Eel, the magazine for ethical eating in London.  www.londonfoodlink.org

Growing Communities is a social enterprise run by local people in Hackney, east London, which operates an organic fruit and vegetable box schemes. Growing Communities’ work on Urban Food Routes is funded exclusively by the London Food Board. www.growingcommunities.org