Fresh-range is changing the future of food supply, with a mission of improving food security for generations to come. Originally launched in 2014 as an ethical online retail store, delivering fresher foods from over 100 local producers to homes in Bristol and Bath, it’s now also making waves with its unique form of public sector food procurement.
The company’s radical new way of procuring, fulfilling and delivering food for the public sector uses a ‘dynamic purchasing system’ to combine local with scale, thereby removing the barriers preventing small independent producers from accessing the public sector.
Fresh-range’s approach means the supply chain is opened up, throughout the duration of a contract, for small-scale farms and producers to supply produce into local schools, universities and more. This is in contrast to previous contracts that only large suppliers could win.
Bath & North East Somerset Council appointed fresh-range to procure, fulfil and deliver fresh produce for school cooks to prepare more than 1.4 million meals in the 2016-2017 academic year. Some universities and museums in the region also now source from local producers through fresh-range.
Fresh-range is shaping debate on the future of public sector food. In December 2017, CEO Rich Osborn was appointed to a UK government DEFRA taskforce to advise on supply chain innovation in public sector procurement. He also sits on the West of England Food Procurement Group. In 2017, fresh-range co-led a conference on “Doing Things Differently in the Public Sector” attended by over 80 public sector food buyers and chefs, and are holding another this year: “Innovations in the cost of catering”.
The company also formed a Dynamic Food Procurement National Advisory Board in 2018, to provide guidance and tools which enable more public sector food spend to be diverted to sustainable local food producers across the UK.