Save The Orchard Project Community Cider Hub

The Orchard Project Community Cider needs you! 

Help us to reduce food waste and put our community-made cider on the map.

The Orchard Project has been producing delicious Local Fox cider and apple juice from London’s unwanted apples since 2016. Our drinks are made purely from fruit harvested in London - 100% local and no air miles. The fruit we use is donated or rescued from gardens, orchards and parks where it would otherwise be left to rot.

Every part of the process, from crushing and pressing to bottling and labelling, is conducted by hand. This innovative mission happens each year thanks to an army of eager volunteers and support from funders.

While our London-brewed cider movement continues to bloom, its funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund is sadly coming to an end. Can you help us keep rescuing the city’s unloved fruit and turning it into something beautiful?

"The concept of being able to put our community apples to good use is excellent!" Jack, fruit donor

Our story

Every year, hundreds of tonnes of apples are left to rot across London’s parks and gardens. As the nation’s only charity dedicated to reviving and strengthening community orchards, we felt compelled to act.

In 2016, we rescued 2 tonnes of fruit.

In 2017, we saved 7 tonnes.

This year, we are on track to transform 13 tonnes of apple-and-pear-spares into unique, scrumptious Local Fox Cider and London Apple Juice!                                                  

On top of that, we outgrew our cider premises, moved to new ones and trained over 700 volunteers in harvesting, pressing and bottling. To thank our generous apple donors and improve the city’s fruit-growing capacity, we’ve given back 1,700 litres of cider and juice and provided tools and training to the community orchards and individuals involved.

What our volunteers say - 

"A nice day spent with people without distraction of phones - people actually spoke and had a laugh together. It's so hard to get that now." Monica, volunteer

"Picking and collecting apples with my children - lovely to participate in a community activity involving various generations rather than just adults" Marie, volunteer

Don’t let all this fruitful good work come to an end! 

Please help us continue transforming wasted fruit by supporting our community cider hub!

How?

We need to raise between £17,500 and £25,000 through this crowdfund campaign. 

By raising our minimum target of £17,500 we can keep the doors of our enterprise open and continue to engage with volunteers and press the 18 tonnes of fruit that we wish to press next season. By reaching our stretch target of £25,000, the material costs of bottling and labelling our 2018 vintage cider will be covered. This will ensure that we have more product to sell to the public from spring 2019, a vital part of ensuring that the enterprise continues to grow and become more sustainable long term. 

**We have match funding secured so that the first £3,000 of money pledged will be doubled, so if you are one of our first supporters, your pledge will be extra valuable!** 

Our wonderful volunteers and supporters have already started fundraising for us through sweepstakes, facebook fundraisers, generous donations and market stalls. We are now reaching out to YOU with this crowdfunder.

We have some wonderful rewards* on offer and we hope you will want to support out mission to keep squishing these unloved apples! 

Example rewards (see the list on the right for the full range on offer)

Our beautiful magnet 

Local Fox Art Print - limited edition and signed by Carys Tait, our illustrating hero. Please note that the reward is for the art print only, no frame included.

Our lovely Local Fox gift box

What have we done so far to help the project become more sustainable?

We have developed a 3 year business plan to map out how we grow and work towards becoming sustainable, we are testing out different models, including sourcing apples that would have gone to waste from commercial farms to make into a new product that will sit alongside Local Fox to increase our profitability. Our processing knowledge and skill has increased significantly in the last 3 years and we have increased the range and type of places that we now sell our cider. We are still on the look out for new stockists so please do get in touch with us if you would be interested in stocking us in the London area.

A little more about our charity

The Orchard Project is the only national charity dedicated solely to the creation, restoration and celebration of community orchards. We aim to make a serious contribution to a better food system.

We work closely with community groups in hubs around England and Scotland helping to design and create new orchards that will last for decades to come. We rebuild orcharding skills and knowledge, run fantastic orchard celebration events and help groups make the most of their bumper harvests. There is a lot more info about what we do and why on our website.

We are a registered charity, number 1139952.

*If you would like rewards delivered outside of the UK, please contact us before you pledge as we may need to charge an additional postage fee.