We are a charitable organisation based in not only one of the most deprived areas in Bristol Hartcliffe and Withywood (BS13), but in the whole of the UK. The main focus of our work is improving health, including addressing food insecurity, where 1 in 8 households are reporting as severe food insecure in the area.

Since March 2020, we have distributed over 30,000 free meals to struggling families across as part of our pandemic food response service, and now we are launching our social enterprise The Real Meal Store.

The Covid-19 food response accelerated our skills and desire to turn what we were doing into something sustainable. Real Meals are the perfect option when you want something delicious, home-cooked, low in salt/fat/sugar (and all of the other nasties we know to avoid) but so full of flavour, colour and texture that we put the big-name, mass-produced frozen meal producers to shame!

We are asking people who share our values to trade with us. This is where we are trying to get our name out across Bristol and start our marketing push! We would like Bristolians to buy Real Meals - and by doing so, they’re paying it forward to a household that’s currently struggling.

Once this set of lockdown restrictions fully lifts, we’re excited to be taking on new trainees who will gain paid and accredited apprenticeships in the Real Meal kitchen. We also have a programme of 10 other food insecurity projects planned to address the root causes of food poverty – all of which will be funded by the sales from our Pay it Forward Real Meals.

As part of this marketing push – we have had 25,000 leaflets printed. We started delivering them last week with a small number of staff and volunteers, but we quickly realised that it would taking a greater effort if we are to distribute these by our target date of the end of May 2021!!

We thought about the medicines drops that you carried out during the pandemic, and had the idea that this might be something that your volunteers might like to support us with please. We clocked up nearly 20,000 steps in 5 hours last week – so in terms of fitness improvement – it is certainly helpful too!