Help the Hungry: The covid-crisis tackling initiative that got our Christmas campaign on the road

Food Truck Masters’ social initiative Together19 is helping to tackle the covid-crisis and support our campaign to feed those in need. Francesco Loy Bell reports

The Basildon factory where food trucks are prepared and manufactured. (NIGEL HOWARD �)

Mobile catering conversion company Food Truck Masters have joined our Help the Hungry campaign, lending two state-of-the-art food trucks to our Christmas campaign as part of their Together19 Street Vendor initiative.

Together19 is a creative infrastructure and platform started to help traders survive despite the financial effects of Covid-19. The initiative negotiates trading locations, offers tools and vehicles, helps provide training and sponsors, and gives financial support to the businesses involved. In exchange, partners commit to offering healthy, locally sourced and environmentally conscious products, support their local communities, and ensure no food is wasted.

Since the start of lockdown, the firm has already lent two food trucks to support the initiative, temporarily deploying vehicles to support London’s homeless population in collaboration with various land owners and councils, handing out hot meals, drinks and food. As the campaign continues, more vehicles — such as two converted London taxi cabs — will join in the effort.

“Together19 will primarily be focused on customer interaction, supporting high street shops and landlords, and making sure traders and restaurants stay exposed via our multiple front mobile food trucks or kiosks,” said a spokesperson.

“This will offer employment and a sense of community. Dark kitchens and advanced technology will be an additional solution.”

For the Together19 founders, a renewed enthusiasm towards communal eating and the sharing of food is crucial. “Our ancestors grew their own food, knew how to cook it and shared so as not to waste,” the spokesperson added. “We are concerned of a possible future where our grandkids won’t be able to order food or eat if their phones are not charged.”

As part of the initiative, Food Truck Masters have lent The Independent’s Help the Hungry Christmas Campaign two food trucks and two black cabs converted to serve tea and coffee, which will be deployed across London up until the festive holiday. Each truck will provide a significant number of free hot meals to those in need, and the initiative will be active six days per week, with the vans covering a range of boroughs throughout the capital.

“The Independent’s Help the Hungry campaign is an amazing opportunity to bring more organisations like ours together, making the most vulnerable aware that there is a community that cares but also to encourage to pursue a possible future,” the spokesperson added.

“Maybe someone [in that community] is the next helping hand in a prep kitchen, or the next driver. The reach that platforms like The Independent have is immense, and with their help we can create awareness and ripple the effects to a much greater extent.”

Alongside its food-related maxims that “one feeds two”, and that “we can all plant a seed to turn dirt into fruit”, the initiative also firmly champions racial and gender equality, as well as environmentalism and positive eating.

Most important, however, is the initiative’s continued support for the most most vulnerable.. “We are stronger, healthier together”.  

This November and December we will be delivering food directly to 1,000 people a day through our partner With Compassion. Please donate here to help us do all we can to ensure no one goes hungry this Christmas.