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Second Plate Give a plate

Food rescue, done nightly · Birmingham

Good food shouldn't hit the bin.

Every evening, Second Plate's vans collect what supermarkets and wholesalers can't sell — perfectly good food, hours from the skip — and turn it into hot meals and full fridges across the city. Last year that was 312,000 plates that almost didn't happen.

Give a plate
Children's and adults' hands stacked together over colourful toys

How it works

The 6pm loop, every day.

Rescue runs on a schedule the food sets. Here's one evening, start to finish.

  1. The collection

    Three vans, fourteen stops — supermarkets, bakeries, the wholesale market. Whatever's good but unsellable gets weighed, logged and loaded.

  2. The sort

    Volunteers at the depot triage crates in under an hour: tonight's cooking, tomorrow's fridges, the freezer. Bananas have their own protocol. Ask a volunteer.

  3. The kitchen

    The community kitchen turns the night's haul into hot meals for shelters and the Tuesday/Friday community dinners — menu decided entirely by what arrived.

  4. The fridges

    By morning, eleven community fridges across the city are stocked. No forms, no questions, no queue theatre. Take what you need; that's the whole rule.

The impact

Counted, audited, published.

312k Plates served last year, from rescued food
480t Food diverted from the bin since 2019
11 Community fridges, stocked by morning
91% Of every pound goes to the work. Audited, public
Why we do it
The food exists. The hunger exists. We're just the van in between.
Second Plate — said on every volunteer induction

Give

Honest numbers, honest asks.

We publish what everything costs, so your gift is a decision, not a guess. Cancel monthly gifts anytime, no guilt emails — we promise it in writing.

A Plate

£3 one-off

Covers the fuel, gas and gloves that turn one rescued kilo into one hot plate.

  • One meal, start to finish
  • The maths is on our site
Give a plate
Most popular

A Shelf

£12 monthly

Keeps a community fridge shelf stocked every week — the quiet workhorse of the whole operation.

  • A shelf, weekly, in your name-ish
  • One honest impact email a quarter
Stock a shelf

A Van Night

£85 one-off

Funds one full evening loop: driver, fuel, fourteen stops, roughly 400 plates' worth of rescue.

  • A whole evening, yours
  • The route map, if you want it
Fund a night

Volunteer

Two hours, actual usefulness.

Most shifts are the 7pm sort: two hours, warm depot, good playlist, immediate visible result. No experience needed — the banana protocol takes four minutes to learn and one evening to love.

Van crews, kitchen hands and Friday-dinner hosts ride the same sign-up. Students, retirees and one former food-safety inspector who audits us for sport: all welcome.

Crates piled with rescued lemons and squash

The people

From both ends of the van

I stack the Ladywood fridge on Tuesdays. A woman told me it's why her kids have fruit in the lunchbox all week. That's the entire annual report as far as I'm concerned.
PriyaVolunteer, fridge run
We donate our unsold bread nightly. Watching it leave in the van instead of the bin fixed something in me about this job.
Bakery managerDonor partner, stop #6
The community dinner doesn't feel like charity. It feels like a big loud family meal where nobody checks your story at the door. That's rarer than the food.
A Friday regularCommunity dinner

The quarterly plate

Four honest emails a year.

The depot

The orange shutters in Digbeth.

Donations of food, time or money all start with a hello. Businesses with surplus: call the depot line — a van can usually swing by within two nights.

Email
hello@example.com
Phone
+44 121 555 0139
Address
Birmingham
Hours
Depot: daily 17–22 Community dinners: Tue & Fri 18:30, everyone