Our story
Since launching from Alicia Weston’s kitchen in 2014, Bags of Taste has grown to become an award-winning authority on food insecurity, has taught over 16,000 people and delivered over 112,000 meals
In the Beginning: Bags of Ideas
Alicia Weston, the founder of Bags of Taste, initially gained recognition through her highly successful charitable supper club, which was renown for producing high-quality food at minimal cost. This expertise in budget-friendly gourmet cooking led her to be invited to teach cooking courses at Crisis, the homeless charity. The experience provided her with first hand insight into the challenges faced by disadvantaged individuals when it came to cooking affordable and nutritious meals.
Despite the success of her cooking classes at Crisis, Alicia noticed that participants rarely replicated the recipes at home, which she found frustrating. This observation sparked her curiosity and drove her to investigate the underlying reasons why people in disadvantaged situations often avoid cooking and make poor and expensive food choices. Her research and determination led her to design a unique programme that uses behavioural science to inspire and sustain lasting results.
Bags of Taste was officially established in August 2014 after two successful pilots.
Grow Bags!
- Our first community cookery course was delivered in Hackney in 2014 by two staff and reached 15 people.
- By 2017, we were operating in eight locations, launching programmes in Hastings and as far as Sheffield. By the end of 2018, we’d delivered 92 courses and supported 2,500 participants living in food poverty
- We have grown steadily and today we’re supporting around 2,300 people a year in 22 locations. Our team is still growing, but our team of 15 part-time and 2 full-time staff, supported by more than 200 engaged and dedicated volunteers make a bigger and bigger impact each year.
- Bags of Taste has regional offices in London, Sheffield and Northumberland
Since our launch in 2014, Bags of Taste has become a leading authority on food poverty and health inequality. Alicia has lectured both medical and masters students on dietary and health inequalities and she was also on the Economics and Population Segmentation steering committee for the National Food Strategy.
Bags of recognition: Our awards
Founder Alicia Weston was awarded the British Empire Medal in the Queen’s Honours List 2019 for ‘making a significant difference’ with her Bags of Taste work.
We have won the UK’s Food & Drink Federation’s ‘Community Partner of the Year’ award and the global .ORG’s Impact Award for innovation.
We were also twice runners up in the Observer Food Monthly’s Best Ethical Food Project
Bags of Data: Our Results
Bags of Taste’s strength is in numbers, both number of participants and data. All our programmes were co-created with our thousands of participants. Every participant is indiviually evaluated and has a chance to give input into the programme, and all suggestions and tweaks are continuously A/B tested to see what really works in practice with real people. From the original face to face courses, we have refined the model further to reach more vulnerable participants with our Mentored Home Cooking Programme.
We’ve had fantastic feedback, participants find the programme hugely accessible, inclusive and flexible.
A taste of our statistics: We have helped over 14,000 people and provided over 100,000 meals.