Food and Friendship: bringing people together through food since 2012

The Food and Friendship Story

Since 2012 Hove Luncheon Club has been bringing people together through food tackling social isolation and loneliness primarily amongst older people and adults with learning disabilities. Based in Hove Methodist Church we provide friendship and low-cost meals with transport if required for older people every Tuesday during school term time.

In 2016 we expanded to run a Thursday club primarily aimed at adults with learning disabilities offering a chance to learn cooking skills, meet friends, have a low cost meal and socialise.

In 2018 we became a charity and merged with local organisation Cooking & Company to become Food and Friendship. As well as the lunch clubs we run small scale cooking projects within the community. The cooking club aims to bring communities together in small scale cooking projects where the meal is prepared together, skills are learnt and stories shared amongst diverse groups that don’t often come together.

Food and Friendship – now in partnership with the Co-op!

DID YOU KNOW that 1p in every £1 you spend on shopping at the Co-op could go to help the Food and Friendship charity?

You’ll just need to register your wish to help Food and Friendship and the Co-op will do the rest. Your shopping bill will be unaffected – click here for more.

If you are currently struggling to afford to buy food for yourself or your family, contact the Local Discretionary Social Fund on 01273 293117.

Between March 2020 and June 2021, Food and Friendship delivered over 7,000 meals and food parcels to isolated people who were shielding or isolating or who didn’t have access to a hot meal. Thank you to our generous funders, volunteers and supporters who made it possible for us to support so many vulnerable people during the COVID crisis. Lunch clubs will re-open in September 2021.

Please contact Caroline on 07813 667857 for more info.

If you would like to support us, you can quickly and easily donate via Givey. Any donations however small will really help us.

We have one part-time worker, a board of trustees and a huge team of volunteers (27 currently) ranging in age from 21 to 88. We are very proud of our volunteers who won ‘Volunteers of the Year’ at the Argus Community Stars ceremony at the Theatre Royal in January 2017.

We fund-raise to keep our costs low to make the club accessible to all. We use surplus food provided by the charity fareShare and have an after lunch programme that can be anything from music and singing to gardening to talks on hobbies. Above all we are a friendly and inclusive group.

Find out more about our fund-raising and find out how you can donate here.

Luncheon Club

A twice weekly lunch club for older people and adults with learning disabilities held at Hove Methodist Church. Meet new friends and enjoy a 2 or 3 course meal with coffee.

Cooking Club

We merged with Cooking & Company and continue to run community cookery projects to teach healthy cooking skills and share this knowledge and enjoyment through eating together.