Terms of Reference: Mapping and proposing support for alternatives to supermarket food retail

About the job

Terms of Reference: Mapping and proposing support for alternatives to supermarket food retail

Commissioned by

Foodrise

Office 518

The Archives

Unit 10 The High Cross Centre

Fountayne Road

London, N15 4BE

United Kingdom

 

Contact person

Liam Lysaght, liam@foodrise.org.uk

 

Background – Organisations:

Foodrise

Foodrise is a charity transforming the food system for climate, nature and justice.

We take bold action to uncover the root causes of injustice in our food system and expose how corporate power exploits people and the planet — while building truly just and resilient alternatives from the ground-up.

We speak truth to power. We take risks. We act where and when others won’t.

From launching legal action and producing hard-hitting research to working directly with local communities, we drive systemic change across food and farming — powered by grassroots energy and backed by the facts.

 

Queen of Greens

The Queen of Greens, launched in November 2022, is a social-enterprise mobile greengrocer service run with the support of The City of Liverpool’s food alliance, Feeding Liverpool. The service aims to improve access to fruit and vegetables for residents across  Liverpool by bringing fresh, affordable produce to areas identified as food deserts and communities affected by food insecurity.

The Queen of Greens attends 35 stops each week, including hospitals, medical centres, schools, community centres, and social housing sites. It brings affordable fresh fruit, vegetables and free-range eggs into the heart of local communities across the Liverpool, and accepts Healthy Start cards, Public Health Liverpool’s own Healthy Boost vouchers and Alexandra Rose vouchers at all stops.

 

Food Voices Coalition

This work will contribute to the work programme of the The Food Voices Coalition, an alliance of seven organisations in six European countries united to put people at the heart of food conversations and decisions, not profit-driven interests. We are:

Foodrise in the UK and Netherlands, Green REV Institute in Poland, Terra! In Italy, CECU in Spain, CAN France, and ALTAA in France.

 

Background – Operating Context

Food Insecurity and Destructive Diets

Food insecurity remains highly prevalent in the UK. According to The Food Foundation, 1 in 7 households are food insecure, affecting approximately 7 million adults and 3 million children across the UK. The inability to access fresh fruits and vegetables is a growing public health concern, disproportionately affecting under-resourced communities. Poor nutrition in these communities leads to diet-related health outcomes such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, and hypertension. A significant contributing factor is the physical environment, including the lack of stores providing healthful foods.

At the same time, diets high in industrially farmed meat, dairy, and aquaculture products are prevalent and normalised in the UK. This has devastating impacts on people’s health, climate, nature and food justice domestically and throughout global supply chains. Households with the lowest incomes would need to spend 45% of their disposable income on food to afford the government-recommended healthy diet – which rises to 70% for households with children.

The Role of Supermarkets

The UK’s highly dysfunctional food system is controlled by just a handful of companies, supermarkets, which sit as powerful middlemen and shape our food environments. Just nine of those companies control 95% of food grocery sales in the UK; just two companies control 43% between them.

They are highly aware of the salience of meat and dairy sales for the emissions profile, which constitute around a third to half of their Scope 3 emissions and thus present a considerable obstacle to meeting climate targets that are aligned with the Paris Agreement. Alongside climate targets, retailers are increasingly responding to this by adopting targets related to increasing plant-based protein sales or changing the ratio of plant- to animal-based protein sales, as well as address unhealthy and unsustainable diets. This pressure comes from the public, civil society, investors, and regulators.

This damaging system is propped up with unjust supply chain practices, including: underpayment, unequal treatment, and erosion of working rights for supermarket staff; supply chains that undermine international food security; squeezing out of smallholder farmers; and dumping food waste on food aid organisations.

So far, retailers have attempted to adapt by adopting a variety of voluntary targets and commitments. Our recent research shows that a decade of these voluntary measures has failed to result in measurable change. This is likely to continue, until retailers are bound by a credible government framework or threatened by an alternative to their business model.

Alternative Food Networks

Alternative food networks, food provisioning which differs from the mainstream food system, such as community kitchens and mobile produce markets like Queen of Greens, could offer a credible alternative to the supermarket model. In theory, they could reshape food environments away from the current destructive status quo.

Where research has been done, positive results of reshaping food environments and diets have been found, showing a correlation between alternative provisioning and an increase in plant-based protein consumption. However, most literature looking at sustainability regarding alternative food networks tends to focus on the packaging, transport of goods, and the mode of farming used to produce the item rather than the impact on diets and product consumption itself.

Policy context – Government Food Strategy

The UK government has indicated its aim to adopt a suite of food policies which deliver a food system that grows the economy, feeds the nation, nourishes individuals and protects the planet, now and in the future. The new Food Strategy is arranged around growth, sustainability, health, and food security. The timeline of these proposals is not specified, with different policies being consulted on in an iterative fashion (rather than a major ‘moment’). As food policy responsibilities are cross-department, the internal case for change must also align with NHS reforms and the government’s health ‘mission’. Among their questions for stakeholders, they have asked for feedback on the ‘role of local food initiatives in a sustainable food system’.

However, the food policy engagement process has been opaque, with the Advisory Board dominated by corporate interests. It remains unclear if Defra will be able to deliver on transformative policy proposals and secure cross-department action along the lines of the last independent National Food Strategy.

Research Proposal – ‘Beyond the supermarket’

We are seeking a researcher to write a policy report, exploring the potential of alternative food networks to offer healthier, more sustainable diets in the UK than the current-supermarket-dominated system, and offering a suite of topline policy recommendations for both local and national government.

The researcher will use desk-based research, building on our existing research materials (see Support section below), to make a positive case for alternative food networks.

The researcher to set out to answer the following questions:

1. What are the benefits and potential pitfalls – to public health, food security, the economy and the environment – of creating a more diverse and varied food provision sector?
2. What alternative models are tried and tested, including alternative business models and ownership structures, and which have the most potential to deliver against the food strategy’s priority areas?
3. How could policy-makers, both local and national, support and enhance a ‘patchwork’ of alternative food provision that supports health, food security, the economy and the environment?

The goal of this research is to strengthen the case for a national policy framework which supports the proliferation of alternative food networks in the UK, by outlining the positive potential of alternative food networks to solve problems which are commonplace in the current supermarket-dominated model. This forms part of a larger programme of work on destructive diets, designed to hold supermarkets to account for their lack of progress on healthy and sustainable diets.

 

Key Outputs

An approx. 15-page policy report answering the key research questions, fully referenced for external publication.

 

Scope

The report should cover:

1. The challenges of the current retailer dominated model, and the outcomes for health, food security and environment. This should include incorporating comments from citizen engagement exercises (including data from Knowsley research conducted by Foodrise, and FFCC citizen engagement work).
2. The potential role of a ‘patchwork’ of alternative food providers in addressing the four themes of the food strategy:

 

1. Improving accessibility, availability, and acceptability of healthy food, particularly in food deserts and food swamps
2. Improving food security and resilience in a highly-concentrated system
3. Environmental impacts, particularly focusing on what people eat
4. Supporting local and national food economies

 

Alternative Food Networks are broadly understood to be ‘food provisioning which in a general sense are different from the mainstream food system’, and distinct from the UK’s supermarket supply chains. The researcher should focus on alternative food network solutions that would be culturally appropriate to the UK, though may choose to use examples from outside of the UK to do this.

As example of alternative food networks, the researcher should include:

1. Mobile produce markets, including the Queen of Greens, building on existing ethnographic research on this model.
2. Community kitchens, such as Sussex Surplus

And may also choose to include:

3. Hives, such as ‘La Ruche qui dit oui!’ in France
4. Community fridges
5. Community gardens
6. Fruit and veg boxes
7. Social supermarkets
8. Farm shops

The report should propose policies for national and local government, aimed at supporting the proliferation of alternative food networks in the UK.

 

Support:

The researcher can seek guidance and information from Foodrise, including the team operating the Queen of Greens project, and their network of allies (where appropriate). They will also have access to use the Foodrise office space where useful, located in London (Tottenham Hale).

Foodrise will also provide a base of internal research into the topic area to serve as a base, including:

1. A 2025 ethnography of Queen of Greens service-users, assessing perceptions of the service’s impact on fresh fruit and vegetable provision.
2. Write-ups and transcripts from workshops held by Foodrise with Queen of Greens service-users.
3. A literature review of the impact of the supermarket model and alternative food networks on the healthiness and sustainability of diets.
4. A library of academic literature on food systems, accrued through Foodrise’s other workstreams.
5. Consideration of reasonable requests to purchase access to relevant literature.
6. Access to reports written on the Queen of Greens for case studies for Sustain’s Bridging the Gap project – supplying some organic options to the customer base each week

 

Audience and Use

This report is aimed at an external audience comprising policy-makers (primarily MPs, ministers and civil servants working on the food strategy team at Defra, as well as local councillors interested in local food policy). In addition, sector-specific journalists. The report is likely to be published around the Labour party conference which will be held in Liverpool in September 2025.

 

Timeline:

Delivery of final report will be needed by 05/09/2025.

Process and payment

Up to £4000 (inclusive of VAT) is available for this contract.

 

Foodrise is actively seeking to move through an anti-racist and anti-oppressive journey in every aspect of its work. We acknowledge that the environmental sector is less open to people from under-represented backgrounds, and we are strongly committed to identifying and correcting where we may be perpetuating patriarchal, white supremacist values and other forms of oppression in our organisational culture, partnerships, and community work.

Read our full Equity, Justice and Anti-oppression statement here.