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What 1% means to Square Food Foundation

July 20, 2026

Cooking from scratch, made accessible to everyone

Square Food Foundation is a food education charity and cookery school based in Knowle West, South Bristol. Its mission is simple but powerful: to make cooking from scratch accessible to people of all ages and abilities. From its friendly community kitchen, the charity runs free and subsidised cookery classes, a weekly recipe kit programme, and regular school partnerships, giving people the skills to take control of their health, wellbeing and household budgets.

Rooted firmly in its local community, Square Food Foundation works with people who often face multiple barriers to exactly these opportunities. The scale of that reach is remarkable: the charity estimates it supports around 15,000 people a year, powered by just seven full-time equivalent staff members.

Real food, real impact

Square Food Foundation’s work translates directly into meals on the table for people at risk of food insecurity. This year alone, the charity distributed 6,410 free recipe kits – each one serving four people, adding up to an extraordinary 25,000 meals reaching local households who needed them.

It’s a striking example of how a small, community-rooted organisation can deliver outsized impact: turning ingredients and recipes into food security, confidence in the kitchen, and a sense of control over health and budgets for thousands of South Bristol residents.

The challenge: brutal funding, growing demand

Behind this impact, Square Food Foundation is candid about the pressure it’s under. Costs are rising faster than sustainable income, and the charity describes its two biggest challenges in stark terms: short-term funding, and being made to “jump through hoops” to secure it. To close the gap, the team has built up its own catering arm to generate income – but, as the charity puts it plainly, “that isn’t enough.”

The organisation has already had to draw on its free reserves to cover running costs – not as a last resort, but as a deliberate investment in growing its capacity to meet demand that keeps rising. That investment includes new roles, including a marketing position, as part of a wider strategy to keep pace with the number of people needing support. It’s a bold bet on sustainability, but one that inevitably increases financial risk in the short term.

Square Food Foundation’s verdict on the trust and foundation funding landscape is blunt: “brutal.” While the charity says it will always apply to trusts and foundations, many have become increasingly unworkable, refusing to contribute to staff costs or core costs, and demanding reporting requirements the charity describes as simply too high for the size of grant on offer. And, as with so many small charities, that financial pressure isn’t abstract – it has had a real, personal impact on the team behind the work.

Why local business backing matters

For Square Food Foundation, the appeal of We Back Bristol is refreshingly straightforward: it’s being built by good people, with no motive beyond supporting Bristol. As the charity puts it, the city is “in a pickle,” and the answer is for Bristol’s businesses and charities to work together and support one another, rather than each organisation fighting alone for a shrinking pool of restrictive grants.

That’s exactly the shift We Back Bristol wants to drive: moving away from short-term, condition-heavy funding, and toward flexible, local, sustained business backing that lets organisations like Square Food Foundation invest in their teams and their future, rather than simply surviving year to year.

The bigger picture

Square Food Foundation shows what’s possible when a tiny team is trusted to do brilliant, practical work: 25,000 meals reached through recipe kits alone, and 15,000 people supported a year. Yet even with this scale of impact, the charity has had to spend down its reserves and gamble on a new strategy simply to keep up with need – a clear sign of how stretched Bristol’s charity sector has become.

This is exactly why We Back Bristol is asking the city’s independent businesses to give 1% of revenue back into their communities. Reliable, local, long-term backing could help charities like Square Food Foundation spend less time fighting for survival, and more time doing what it does best – putting good food, and the confidence to cook it, within reach of everyone who needs it.

Imagine if every business gave 1%.