What is Lovage Project?

Lovage project is a non profit, plant based, low waste, social enterprise and catering company. Our mission is community regeneration – providing job opportunities for those in need, using our business as a way to support marginalised groups, and delivering healthy vegan food to our locals. Our four key objectives are to contribute to community regeneration, foster cooperative working, promote sustainability, and tackle disadvantage...

We run a community meals program at Stockwell Park Community Trust and a catering company with sustainable food and waste practices. We offer ethical employment opportunities that pay London living wage, and hope to deliver cooking workshops educating people on cooking healthy food on a budget; reducing poverty and improving physical health.

A Cute Brief History:

We initially opened Autumn 2019 in Vauxhall Gardens community centre, providing fresh and affordable plant-based food and drinks to local residents, workers and users of the community space which was a huge success until the first covid lockdown caused us to close to the public.

Throughout the first lockdown, we cooked 7700 meals for NHS workers, homeless shelters housing LGBTQ+ folk, created food boxes for local low-income families and supported street kitchens for the homeless such as Buses For Homeless and Brixton Soup Kitchen.

In June 2022 we restarted our community meals program at Stockwell Community Centre with Lovage Project Community Café, serving some free and some Pay-As-You-Can-Afford plant-based meals to the community. On average, we serve 150 free meals a week, with numbers still growing.

We can do this thanks to funding and profits made from catering.

Check out our Catering and Café pages for more of what we do on them.

Our Sustainable Practices:

- We are vegan! Plant-based products generally require much less agricultural land, need less water and cause less pollution than animal products

- Not using Avocados. The over production of avocados to suit food trends has negatively impacted the surrounding biodiversity in avocado farms in some areas of the world

- Not using Almond milk/Almonds. Almonds require a lot of water to reach maturity. It takes 4.6 litres of water to produce each and every almond

- By default we serve tap water, bottled water is available on request at extra charge

- Using surplus fruit and veg for our community cafe. 80% of food we use in our community food project is surplus with donations from organisations such as City Harvest and The Old Post Office Bakery

- All our food is served plastic-free, either on reusable platters or in biodegradable boxes

- We use NEMI Teas, London based company providing work for refugees; all teabags are plastic-free, the packaging is biodegradable, and the teas are Organic and Fairtrade-certified

- Girls Who Grind Coffee, a Southwest England womxn led roastery with coffee sourced exclusively from women producers worldwide

- We are a London Living Wage employer