Spotlighting Our Supporters: Dunns Bakery
By FFB volunteer Lenny O’Sullivan
If you have ever visited the high street in Crouch End or Muswell Hill, you might know all about an independent, family-owned bakery called Dunns. In addition to an inviting selection of pastries and cakes, Dunns also boasts a commendable history of contributions to local charities. Dunns supports fundraiser events, such as the YMCA Fun Run in Crouch End, and donates food hampers to local foodbanks at Christmas. In June last year, the bakery held its 50th annual Doughnut Week, in which unique doughnut flavours were custom made to raise nearly £45,000 for Great Ormond Street Hospital and The Children’s Trust.
What is more, the Muswell Hill branch aims to donate surplus food to local foodbanks eight times per week on average. At Finchley Foodbank, we are fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of this small business’ generosity.
Chris Kypris, the manager at Dunns Bakery Muswell Hill, ensures that Finchley Foodbank receives a weekly supply of baked goods, ready for our service users to take home during our Saturday client session. Every single room-temperature food item in the shop gets donated, from bread rolls to sausage rolls, and this typically fills five bags bigger than bin liners for us to collect. Chris recognises that running a bakery which promises only fresh food to its customers will inevitably result in some food surplus each day, as baked goods that are still perfectly fine to eat become impossible to sell. However, while some local businesses may find their solution through online surplus food market place apps, Dunns chooses to support Barnet residents in need, for which we are enormously grateful. Chris adds that Dunns Muswell Hill intentionally keeps its daily food production consistent throughout the year, despite fewer sales in the hot weather, in order to boost the scale of leftover food to be donated during the summer months.
On the topic of battling food poverty in London, Chris says that ‘what we need most are more delivery volunteers. There are so many businesses, large businesses too, which throw away food because they don’t have the capacity to deliver it where it’s needed. We do our part by bagging up the food, but we do rely on volunteer drivers to collect it.’
Finchley Foodbank couldn’t agree more - we are always on the lookout for volunteers - and would like to say a massive thank you to our volunteers who do this valuable collection for us at the moment, and to the team at Dunns for helping us to provide fresh bakery items that we know our clients thoroughly enjoy.