Please Sir, Can I Have Some More? Can Brands Help Create Long-Term Food Fairness?

Food has emerged as one of the key social faultlines in the UK exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Now that the initial panic-buying phase has calmed down, it’s easy to see that when we talk about “shopping for essentials”, it means very different things to different people. 

For some of us, lockdown is an opportunity to improve our culinary skills, perhaps to try a vegetarian or vegan diet, or simply to indulge ourselves to fend off boredom. 

For others, food has become yet another frontline: 

• For furloughed and redundant workers, unsure if they’ll be able to feed their families
• For quarantined older and disabled people, unable to get to the shops or access online deliveries
• And for those who find themselves having to subsist on a diet of junk food

As in so many other areas, food separates “The Haves” from “The Have Nots”. 

But food poverty is nothing new.

Even before the Covid-19 crisis erupted, the charity Sustain warned that 8.4 million people in the UK struggle to get enough to eat and are just one big unexpected bill away from a crisis. 

That’s not just people who are unemployed and their families.

It includes people in low-paid work, older people on fixed incomes, people with disabilities, and a truly horrifying number of children.

More than four million children, according to a 2018 study. The Children’s Society is running an urgent campaign to support isolated children right now. 

Many people hope and believe that the stresses and hardships brought about by COVID-19 will be a catalyst for social change. 

Already, the government and the public have taken steps that were unimaginable just a few months ago. We’re likely to see health and social care transformed to adapt to the post-COVID-19 world. 

But what about food?

Here, the onus is upon businesses and brands to envision a better future. 

Some have social ethics at the heart of their corporate values, like Olio, Fareshare, Neighbourly.com & The Co-op.

They are all taking action during the current emergency that is consistent with their long term behaviours and driven by their founding principles.

The supermarkets are helping vulnerable customers, with extra delivery slots and dedicated opening hours.

Greggs – not normally a shrinking violet in the media stakes and a business very much associated in the public’s mind with The Have Nots – is doing excellent work through The Greggs Foundation.

The Foundation is running breakfast clubs and hardship grants for families, focused in the company’s north-east home.

Even Bill’s and The Ivy Cafe, favourites of “The Haves”, have reopened their doors to become delivery-only kitchens providing food to the isolated, vulnerable, low income families.

Those examples are just the tip of the iceberg. This article points to many, many more.

And while it’s great that so many companies are doing so much, it’s reasonable to wonder: will it last or change anything in the long term?

There are signs from parallel categories that it might.

Last year, Unilever announced that its purpose-led, Sustainable Living Brands were growing 69% faster than the rest of its business and delivering 75% of the company's growth.  

Then, CEO Alan Jope, said: 

“Two-thirds of consumers around the world say they choose brands because of their stand on social issues.”

COVID-19 has put social solidarity and domestic inequality firmly onto the agenda of a socially-aware public - one that has shown itself willing to pay a premium for ethical products. 

Until now that has emphasised ecological issues and global problems. 

Many would surely be just as willing to pay a little extra to relieve the pressure on neighbours struggling with food poverty. 

Is there a brand out there willing - for example - to sell the same goods at two different prices - one subsidising the other - for the sake of food fairness?

Is such an idea even workable, let alone desirable?

Who knows. 

Perhaps things will go back to normal. There’s a lot to be said in support of the idea that people won’t remember what brands did during the pandemic once things go back to normal. 

But do we want to go back to a “normal” that saw millions struggling to get enough to eat even before we think about an unprecedented global recession?

Perhaps it’s in brands’ interests just as much as governments to help define the new normal.