Beer Nouveau and Open Kitchen MCR’s waste food and drink nights go weekly

SAVING perfectly good grub from going in the bin, the monthly Surplus evenings have been serving up special brews and street food since April – and this Friday the pop-ups are going WEEKLY.

If the pull of great beer and tasty hot street food doesn’t quite do it, then how about saving the planet and helping local people?

The project is an evolution of the partnership between social enterprise Open Kitchen MCR (which ran the temporary Real Junk Food restaurant on Oxford Street, Manchester’s first waste food pay-as-you-feel restaurant, and still operates the city’s first waste food outside catering enterprise) and independent craft brewer Beer Nouveau. Surplus uses food that would otherwise have gone to waste to create hot and cold snacks and small plates plus small batches of beers using gluts of fruit and herbs.

2019 11 12 Surplus Hot Food
Open Kitchen MCR saves food destined for landfill

Open Kitchen MCR intercepts edible ingredients destined for landfill from food businesses including supermarkets and wholesalers, helping to lower Manchester’s carbon footprint and providing hot nutritious meals and supplies to people in crisis via homelessness hostels and independent food banks. The Surplus street food events help to subsidise this invaluable community work.

2019 11 12 Surplus Dessert
The Surplus project creates plates and pints from waste

Beer Nouveau founder Steve Dunkley and Corin Bell, director of Open Kitchen MCR, said: “We’ve committed to do this until Christmas to see how it goes, and we hope that Manchester’s beer drinking community (let’s face it, a sizeable chunk of the population) will support us. And if the pull of great beer and tasty hot street food doesn’t quite do it, then how about saving the planet and helping local people?”  

Surplus takes place at Beer Nouveau Brew Tap on North Western Street behind Piccadilly Station every Friday from 15th November. The bar will open from 4pm, with food served from 5.30pm – there’s no need to book, just turn up.  

Find out more about Beer Nouveau here and Open Kitchen MCR here.