Inside london’s leading food redistribution charity - The felix project
Marcus Roberts Final
Arthur: [00:00:00] It's a special day. Today we have Marcus Roberts with the Felix Project. Marcus, moment I met you. I thought, oh God this guy's got such an infectious energy, so gifting, so creative.
Marcus: Thank you Arthur.
Arthur: Everyone I know. Who knows you they just, they can't put it into word. You see them twitching and they're like, yeah, there's something about that guy. And I wanna know what we're gonna move we're gonna move on to talking about the Felix project, which is London's leading food redistribution charity set up in 2016.
And it's achieving remarkable things. But. We're starting with you. Thank you. A Marcus, where do you get your drive from this ridiculously infectious. Care and presence
Marcus: i'm just really grateful to be a part of the Felix Project and do what I do. It's such a real blessing to be able to do something with your life that's making a real genuine difference to people out there in the world.
It's very satisfying for yourself as well. It's known by going to work every day and the action you take. It's really helping people. [00:01:00] The Felix Project is such an amazing charity, and since I joined, it's a volunteer just not long after it started. Has really generally changed my life, given me lots of pleasure, lots of joy.
It does make you feel like you're on the right path in life and you're really doing something with your time that's really making an impact out there.
Arthur: Put us in your world, day to day must be so different for you, give us a flavor of the moments that you're like, oh my God.
I want more. I, this is incredible.
Marcus: Yeah. So I'm a relationship manager here at the Felix Project, which is very fared. I look after some celebrities. I help with some major donors. I help get new corporate partners involved. I help get people volunteer. It's really fared well. One of the coldest partners I'm working for at the moment is a company called Los Mochis and a guy called Marcus Feaf.
I was with him in soho House about four years ago. We had a conversation about the Felix project. He said he loves the sound about the charity and wants to really get involved and help out. It was just as he was launching Lost Mot Cheese and he is saying to me, Marcus, how much does it cost per meal? So I spoke to the team, find out if it cost per meal.
He came up this amazing idea to give one meal to the charity for every single meal sold at his restaurant. [00:02:00] And since that's been going this year, he recently gave us a big, massive check, which has bought a total of meals donated to 1 million. So over the last four years, lost watches in noting Hill.
They've got a new one in the city of London. I've given a million meals to the Phoenix project, which I think is incredible. And it's such like nice having partners like that where it's ingrained in the whole business. So every time you go to the restaurant and buy a meal, he's given a meal to charity. I think just need more partners like that.
Arthur: Wow. And really moving the needle and no wonder you have such a relationship driven role because you are. Such a big part of you, and from some of.
Supplies that Felix work with, or maybe there are some celebrities that have just been fantastic. Over the years,
Marcus: what we're saying about supplies being fantastic over the years. The first one that comes to my mind, it's Ocado. Ocado is such a fantastic company. They've really got behind the Felix project,
their staff volunteer, they give them money, they help with vans and we get so much good food from [00:03:00] Mecado hit such a big company and a mass scale like that. We get loads of surplus from them 'cause they know more ahead of time what's not gonna sell. They're a really good partner all around.
Partner Cardo, Amazon. Amazing. We had lots of food from Amazon Fresh, and we've had their teams come and volunteered. And then multi-bank, Felix's, multi-bank. We partner with Amazon. They give us loads of essential items which we can give for free to families that really need them, like toilet roll toothpaste.
And it's really making a massive difference to people's lives.
Arthur: Have there been some really satisfying wins for you
Marcus: so we've worked really well with Melissa Hemsley, who's been one of our like natural ambassadors for the charity. She's been volunteering since we first started. She volunteered some Christmas Eve and go and get surplus food from Forna and Mason. We go around and give it to a few homeless charities.
She's helped with different events. She speaks about us on TV and she's really helped raise awareness for the Felix project 'cause she's such a big, well known foodie. She's such a good person to get behind us and she's really connected us to lots of different places and brought new people into volunteer, new supporters, new media attention.
Yeah, Melissa's been like a real God Center charity.
Arthur: Really [00:04:00] amazing, showing many people involved and, in terms of where Felix wants to go from here, is there, what are the challenges? Is there a certain type of food that you are that you need more of? Are you getting. Is the bulk of it fresh produce?
Marcus: Yeah, so we're really proud to say that 50% of the food we send out to the charities that we work with is fruit and vegetables. We really pride ourselves to try and give them an adequate amount of fresh fruit and vegetables because that's what you need for a healthy diet. So we get all different.
We get bread, we get milk, we get meat, but we really happy. We get the abundance of vegetables and fruit and even good quality meat. We know that's going out to people and that's really. Benefit in their lives, their wellbeing, their mental health, their physical health. Just having that fresh food is full of nutrition and like just the nutrients they need to survive and live a good life, really.
Arthur: How does it work? So you get all this food into these warehouses. Where does it end up going? Because you also make meals. Now you've got a kitchen.
Marcus: Yeah. Good question Arthur. The food comes into the depots. Lots of the supplies deliver the food directly to us.
So like a cardo Amazon [00:05:00] Fresh, 'cause they've got the holiday transport. They can just bring it to us, which saves us costs. Sometimes we go and get food. From other places like Costco and different companies. And then once the food is there, it comes into the depot and then it gets sorted out by our team of volunteers and staff on the ground.
They get a pick list. Each charity has a list of certain foods that they like and certain foods they don't like. To give you an example, any Muslim based charities, we do not give them any pork so we try and give the communities the food that's right for them that's gonna really benefit them and they're gonna eat it.
So very careful to make sure the right food goes to the right people. So once a food comes in, each volunteer gets a pick list of what the charity wants. They go around the fridge and the chiller. They take one of each item, pull it on the trolley until it's six trays high, and that's full of the different, could be bread, could be tomatoes, could be eggs, could be milk, could be cheese, some meat, vegetables.
It's really fair. Each one is exactly right for the needs of that charity in that community that gets sorted out and they, one in the day, one of the drivers will come in, they take that palate, pull it in the fan, and I think they do about three or four drops on each route and they go and deliver that food to the community.
It could [00:06:00] be a mosque, could be a primary school, could be a church. And the community organization is all different places we go. So we never give food directly to people, just to the community organizations. And volunteering's a big part of, we are powered by volunteers. We couldn't do what we do without volunteers.
I think we had over 13,000 people volunteer for us in 2004. Extraordinary.
Arthur: People must come to you with personal stories about how much the charity has helped their family or them.
Put us in that room in those moments.
Marcus: Yeah, it's very inspiring. It really drives it home like the impact your work's happened to these people lives.
Lots of people would go to one of the communing organizations and they'd get some food and bring it home to use to cook for their family, and before that access to that food, they wouldn't really be able to cook these meals to their family and then have to just survive from lots of different kind of stuff's.
Not really that healthy. So by giving this food to the places where they sort it out and give it to the people that come there, it's really benefiting them. I've heard stories from people like one of the most inspiring things I think we do is the market stores we do in primary schools all over London.
So lots of families [00:07:00] are struggling to feed their children right now, there's over a million families in the UK that said they found it hard to feed their children over the last 12 months. Which is really powerful and really drives home like how bad it is.
And so by giving the food to the primary schools, it's really helping the parents get that fresh food, take it home and feed their children. We've had so many happy stories from people coming back and telling us it's really made a difference and we do it in such a nice way. So it's like a market's.
Store and we talk about sustainability, the environment, and we say to the parents, by coming to the Phoenix Market store and taking some of the food, then you're helping the environment. They're stopping it, going to waste, stopping greenhouse gas, really making a difference. But it's also helping them.
They're not thinking about poverty, not thinking they're taking it 'cause they're in a, they need to kind of thing. There's with dignity. There's like a nice way to do stuff under,
Arthur: You're a big community guy. And tell us about the community that Felix has ended up.
Obviously you're connected to so many communities, but give us a sense of, maybe some of the relationships you've got, I'm sure there are people you unofficially [00:08:00] mentor tell us about
Marcus: that. We've really grown like a nice extended family over the years.
It's a really nice team of people that work here and also the volunteers and the communities we serve. It's a very close network. We have lots of events throughout the year. There's like a Christmas parties, there's different things and we come together and to celebrate each other. It's very powerful and I think it's interwoven for all we do with the thesis project.
Arthur: Going back, the weird thing about the world is people have these ideas a sense that they want to do something and that's how projects become these.
Behemoths these, hugely successful vehicles of change. Whether it be a new product innovation or a charity such as, yourselves. Where have things come from that moment where food was delivered in London? To now.
Marcus: Yes. The Felix project was founded by Justin and Jane Bashaw, these very inspiring people.
They lost their son, Felix, at 14 years old and they made the Felix project in his memory. So it's really come from a heart-based place and there's lots of like their home. [00:09:00] Spirits behind it kind of thing, and it's like it's in his memory. So it's a very special place to be. It's not just like a brand charity.
It's very family orientated and his dad, Justin and Jane are still very involved in the charity today. So 10 years ago we started in one small depot in West London. We had one little fan. There's a white fan of a little green no-go on it, and maybe a team of five staff and maybe a handful of community organizations that we gave food to.
It was going really well. People love the food and it's growing and growing over the last 10 years to where we are today. We have four depots all over London, northeast, south and west. So one here in popular, which is East London, one in Enfield for North London, one in Acton for West London, which is our biggest depot, and also one in Deford for South London.
But plus the four Depots. We got Felix's Kitchen, which is based here in popular, and that's where we make up the 5,000 meals a day from surplus food. We've got an amazing team of chefs. They come in, they never know what they're gonna make each day they go in the depot. See what food's there, then create a menu on the spot, and that's the food we have for that day.
And every day up to 5,000 meals is being made, . And it's a [00:10:00] bit like magic.
Arthur: Where do you want Felix to go? From here?
Marcus: So the Felix project, we've started with the aim that no good food is wasted and no one goes hungry.
We've seen there's such a problem out there still today. A third of all the food that gets produced in the whole world is actually wasted. It's crazy really. You think about all that energy, the cost, the labor force going to making that food, and a third of it is wasted. just it doesn't make no sense all these hungry people out there. So we wanna try and change that. We've got a powerful policy unit where we're speaking to the government.
Our CEO, Charlotte's been at number 10, she was at Labor Party Conference and we're trying to speak to the mps and people in power. To talk about what we know best, food waste, food poverty, how it's affecting people, and try and influence the policy that the government's making to make it easier for us to access food from like farm Gate from different sources and give that food to people.
So if it going to anaerobic digestion or landfill. And that's a big part of where we're trying to go in the future to get more food and help more people.
Arthur: And going into that bit about the future what does that look like? What does that involve breaking into [00:11:00] a different part of the supply chain or,
Marcus: yeah, so we're already working with some farms.
We're try and get some more food from Farm Gate. We've seen there's a lot of problem there, food going to waste. We've recently worked at some amazing farms in Kent. There's one called He Hall and Suns, and it gives us amazing abundance of apples. He lets us go and harvest the apples and we take them back to the depot and give them to different charities.
It's been amazing for us 'cause those apples will have gone to waste and then we've rescued them and they're really amazing healthy apples and given 'em for free for the community. We work with Farm Fresh and normally these things are more expensive to buy and it's really satisfying to see them come fresh from the farm to the communities.
It's very good for our corporate partners as well. They love volunteering there. Going into a team of 15 or 20 people spending a day picking the apples and it makes 'em feel really in touch with the whole process. They picked that apple themselves and they know that's going to help people.
Yeah, it is a really beautiful partnership with the farm. Maybe more farms in the future. Wow.
Arthur: Wow. Okay. That's really exciting. And now we've
Marcus: merged with Fair Share. So recently we announced our big merger with Fair Share and that's such a Ash's thing. The Felix products, the largest food we distribute in charity in London, and Fair Share in the whole of the uk.
[00:12:00] Now we partner together, we can access more suppliers over the uk, help more people have a more powerful voice for our policy work. And then when people are reaching out about food waste, instead of going to two different people, Felix and Fair, Cheff, meh, there's one organization to go to. It should make the whole process much smoother.
So once it's finalized, I think it's gonna be a lot more food, helping more people.
Arthur: And moving back towards you, Marcus, have you always had this infectious energy. Because I know faith is very important to you.
Marcus: I think it's so important for us to try and look out for each other in this world. Life can be quite hard and I think it's very important to try and be like your brother's keeper kind of thing.
It's not even like a religious thing, it's just like being there for people. Everyone goes through their own different things in life and I think when we like reach out to people and really be present with each other, we can make that journey easier and just make life that bit more bearable. The more open you are and the more kind of compassion, the more magical life becomes.
'cause we can all be there for each other and this makes the world a much more beautiful place. Like you said, a sense of community. There should be community amongst the people you work [00:13:00] with your area you live in and just having that connection with the people around you. I think it's very important for life really for.
Like we learned for the pandemic when everyone was stuck at home, couldn't go out. It's very hard for people.
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Marcus: And I think this goes to show the importance of connection and just being together with people helping each other, working together
Arthur: makes you just think life is better when we're connecting.
Yeah. Did you learn this from someone?
Marcus: No, just like I'm very passionate about like just trying to be present, be with people and just go out in the world and try and make a difference with your life that you can do. There's only so much you can do, but your little impact in the world can have a ripple effect and help more people can inspire one person and go up [00:14:00] there and do something similar, but
Arthur: Did you have a mentor, when you were younger and you were like, wow, that's, they are getting it right.
Marcus: I dunno. Lots of people in the world I've been inspired by.
I used to work for Deville Organic and I've always been very inspired by Lady Bamford and what she's achieved there. She's one of the first people to have the idea of having organic farming and growing organic produce here in the uk. At first, people was like, what is she doing organic farming?
It's never gonna work out. And she made a little small farm shop at her farm in the COTS world selling bread, milk and cheese, and that just grew and grew. So what we got today there, the massive farm in the cots the stores in London and the Banford brand, and she's done really well. And just having that idea.
Believing in something wholeheartedly and it's bringing it from your mind to reality. Like someone like that. Yeah. She's really created that from her imagination really. And it's made a big difference in the world. They're support of the Felix project. They're giving financial donations. They give us surplus food sometimes.
Arthur: You are very connected with yourself and involved in giving so much. Where brings you to feeling really centered?
Marcus: So my family's very important to me. So [00:15:00] like my mom, my brothers and sister, my little nephew and nieces who help look after just having that around you and it makes you realize what's really important in life, having that, nice strong network around you.
But yeah, just grateful for my life, really, how it's turned out and what I'm able to do. Even having my role relationship manager here at the Felix project is a magical blessing. It's like massive, like I love what I do. It's such a real privilege to be able to do that.
Arthur: When the days you might not be feeling great, something's happening in your personal life, that's difficult. How do you go from jumping from the negative voices to No, i'm gonna go get this.
Marcus: That's a really good question. 'cause every day can be a bit different but I just think it's so important, the stories you tell yourself and what like you are saying to yourself throughout the day kind of thing.
We've all got our own internal dialogue and sometimes something can happen and you have this negative voice saying, oh, that's not good, like blah, blah. But it's, you can't let that overtake you and you have to focus on the good. And it may sound like really silly, but it's hearing that positive voice and it's giving you that confidence, that encouragement and.
Believing in yourself is so important, [00:16:00] and it changes everything. It changes like your energy, how you feel, and you've got to try and just, yeah, just let's keep that going so you swing
Arthur: into bringing this positive voice and that kind of ideology. You kinda have to
Marcus: dig yourself up in life and it's believing what you're doing and like, when you wake up and just be like, yeah, just know what you're doing.
It's the right thing.
Arthur: What to you are , three key messages you've touched on one this positive voice being your own sponsor. Are there any others that you feel are key to people being connected and empowered by themselves?
Marcus: I think just gotta really be grateful to be alive and be here on earth
we're not here forever and it's a real blessing to be alive and have our journeys here on earth as long as we can forget that and get caught up in the day-to-day stuff and mundane like rushing here and there, but sometimes just to pause and just be grateful to be here and be able to do what you do really.
Yeah. We're gonna move to the quick part questions. Three things you get joy from.
Giving back, trying to help other people. My family, being in my family and just being there for them and being there for each other.
Arthur: A mantra you want to embrace now would be
Marcus: [00:17:00] just keep trying, never give up there's always like something you can do. Maybe something doesn't work out, maybe something does work out, 'cause eventually something will work out and it'll work out amazingly for you.
One unusual thing that gives you pleasure. I like volunteering. Before I started work at the future, I used to volunteer and it was generally one of the highlights of my life just going out there, doing a volunteer shift, you go back home and you just feel really nice.
It puts things in perspective. And connected to the community. A favorite book, film or artist that isn't obvious. I like, some horror fiction like Dean K, Steve Stephen King, read some James Patterson
fantastic.
Arthur: You can have one thing added to your bucket list today. What would it be?
Marcus: I try and do a big challenge event for the Phoenix Project every few years.
I'd done one like six years ago with Ben Elliot from Quintessentially and raced 38,000 We recycled across Europe, which was amazing. Did another one a few years ago from depot to depot for the Felix project, where 24,000. Last year I'd done one called Ride in London. It's a hundred miles from London to Essex and backer.
Again, it was really hard. I had such a long time doing it, but I raised [00:18:00] 36,000, so I was super proud about that. Yeah. So you
Arthur: don't have to look forward to, to see the real
Marcus: super hero. Yeah. So I like to do something like that again. One day I like to even climb Matt Kilimanjaro. My big dog every year has been a bit more to get it to 50,000.
It just make me feel really good in my heart. Yeah. I've got lots of supportive friends that get behind me and, yeah but
Arthur: Mark, these numbers are just unimaginable.
Marcus: Yeah. I get such a thrill from it when I looked like one of those just giving pages. You keep seeing it going up and there's the energy of people getting behind.
You could be a fiver, could be a pattern, but that message of encouragement and the support, it's really beautiful
Arthur: I think that's quite an important theme here as well. 'cause yes, you've worked on building some of the most. Incredible relationships to getting a huge amount of food to Felix, but also key message from what you are saying is actually it's the small things that really add up.
Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you Arthur, and giving us your time and if anyone's got any questions, they can reach out. Thank you Arthur. And and. Yeah, just what, people can get in touch, they can volunteer, can't they? They can donate. We're
Marcus: powered by volunteers.
Like I said, last year in 2024, we had like around [00:19:00] 13,000 people come and volunteer. At the Phoenix Project, we've got our four Depots, Felix's Kitchen. We love people to volunteer. If somebody does wanna volunteer, please look on our website, www dot the Felix project. Org and get involved. You can apply to be a volunteer register on the system.
You can do one day a week. You can do one day a month. You can do one day a year. It's completely up to you. There's no restrictions. You haven't gotta sign up for a certain amount of time or a certain number of shifts. One of the amazing things about the Felix Project, you can just come in and do one day a month and even two, whatever works for you.
So we try and make it fit around your lifestyle and your schedule. Yeah, so please come and volunteer. Help us get more good food to people that need it all over London and dollar.
Arthur: People can donate.
Marcus: Yes, you can donate. Press that button. So the main things we need at Felix Project is funding to help us get more food to people, more food and more volunteers.
Speaker 12: So Marcus, what's this? I'm really happy to tell you about this so fast. This is the amazing work we are doing. These four young guys, they were our trainee apprentice chefs. They're with us for 12 months, and they worked with Toto, who's our chef trainer. They've had some amazing experiences. They've worked at Spring [00:20:00] Restaurant, they've done stuff with the Hilton.
They've even met the Queen recently, a special event in Canary Wolf with the Eden Project. There's a picture there somewhere, and that's them. When they was there meeting the Queen, they made a special cake. Very special. Yeah, very special. And they're just really inspiring guys. They come here, they had know not a lot of knowledge about cooking, about kitchens and how it all works.
And they've learned so many new skills. They've developed confidence, learned to get their way around the kitchen. And it's that work experience they've got. It's priceless. To go to the Hilton and work to go to spring restaurant and work. It's really helped them to grow and develop, to become future amazing chefs.
And here we have Toto who is teaching young apprentices to be chefs at the Felix project.
Speaker 4: Apparently demands me. Tell us about, you maybe what you're doing here at vx. Yeah, absolutely. I joined Felix last October and we're now running a kitchen employability program, so it's an apprenticeship scheme, so it's a government funded program where we hired on a low minimum wage full-time contract for young adults.
They were neat, meaning not in employment, educational training, and we gave them the [00:21:00]opportunity. To work with us and getting some training. We've been following a one year long culinary program. Every month we focus on a different topic from pasta, making, vegetable, meat, anything. And, they started from a point where they didn't know anything about.
Food and kitchen, and now they can move around a professional kitchen with ease. It's all about providing these people with confidence skills. Sometime in hospitality is that very first step.
And a bit of a sense of belonging that will help them to find a permanent employment in the hospitality industry. They're coming up to the end of the program now. They will have the endpoint assessment by the end of the year, and of course, part of my job will be helping them in finding a permanent employment.
In the industry. So we've been working with different partner of the Felix project, like the Hilton Foundation the spring restaurants, different catering company we've been working with throughout the year. With the hope that comes the end of the contract in January, they will have a permanent position in the [00:22:00] hospitality industry.
It's been an incredible journey for me and for them and for Felix as a whole. We've never done employability at this level, at this scale in the kitchen. And again, it's been incredible when you really see the impact you have in changing people's lives. It just really add an incredible amount of value of what Felix already does
Father : Father Neil, how did you come here how did I come about seven years ago? We connect with the Felix. I'm Avic in East London. We run a food share project and nowadays Felix is one of our biggest supporters, so we get mainly our fresh fruit and veg meat, dairy products, eggs from Felix.
Wow. How did you hear about the charity? It was by chance. We were, I was paging one evening in the one evening the evening standard, and there was an advent about Felix in there. We connected and the rest is history. Wow. Wow. It's hard to pick up for vibe of people, but you've got a very lovely [00:23:00]energy.
How, where'd you get that from? It's I love what I do. And the Felix projects allows me just to reach so many people every week. So in my church today, we'll welcome about a hundred families. We say Thursday's a new Sunday because we actually get more people through the door on a Thursday, then on a Sunday.
And the catalyst of that all is food. Yeah. But the ripple effects. The whole thing is more than food. And I imagine you've got lots of people who have come to your church who now volunteer perhaps. I have a team of about 20 volunteers really. But we haven't grown on a Sunday, and that's really good because what we do on a Thursday is not to get more people in church on a Sunday.
It is to serve our community distinctively. So we don't do it to evangelize or to make disciples we just go out and feed the hungry. Great opportunity for conversation for those who are lonely and even in the winter, we are warm [00:24:00] space. For people sit in a cold house. We love what we do. It gives us a good energy. It gives us a good feel. But it's all about the community.
Two messages that you can give to people listening. It's amazing how around food we gather around food, but the ripple effects is greater. So friendships are being created. People who are lonely, people are elderly. And for some people on a Thursday, the only other part of the week, they're gonna have real human contact.
In a world where we on screens we do everything AI and. We tap so yeah. It's about the human contact that is at the heart of what we do. Really moving. Thank so much.
