Eggcup has been helped a great deal by some local business supporters. Let’s start with Wallings Ice Cream, a name everyone around Lancaster thinks of in this (occasionally) hot time of the year. This local family has had a dairy farm at Cockerham, south of Lancaster, since 1948, and has been making ice cream with their milk since 1986.

Wallings has given Eggcup  some ice cream (see the photo). More importantly, they have been able to provide freezer space. Often Eggcup is offered a large quantity of surplus food that we cannot give out immediately, but that we and other food clubs could use in coming weeks and months. (In one memorable case, it was an entire lorry-load of meat pies). It could be already frozen, or we might freeze it to preserve it until it is needed. But running freezer space is expensive. Eggcup has two industrial-sized freezers, one in the Lancaster hub. But even then, we have limited space. And we can’t just keep adding freezers, because they are very expensive to run – at one point we were paying £500/month just for the electricity for one freezer.

Local businesses that can let us use their freezer space enable us to have the space when we need it. It is a very generous offer from our business supporters it would really be easier and cheaper for them to leave the space empty. But Wallings have offered space to help the community.

Wallings have their own super ice cream shop, but they also supply many cafes and corner shops around the area. If you stop in to get a cone some hot day, remember that besides making scoops of Blackcurrant Cheesecake and Saucy Cappuccino ice cream, they also make a difference in their local community.