On 21 March 2017, chefs and CEOs will dish up a banquet to 100s of everyday heroes from schools and hospitals, raising money to tackle food waste and food education.

The Jamie Oliver Food Foundation and ourselves here at UKHarvest are bringing together some of the best chefs in the UK and business leaders, who are shedding suits and sporting aprons, to raise funds for food education and to make sure less food is wasted across the U.K.

These amazing chefs already understand the food waste challenge and are generously giving their time to help raise money to combat food waste, but also to raise awareness for everyone to do better. Dan Doherty from Duck and Waffle is one of those chefs, recently he said, “I think it's so important food waste is discussed more and (CEO Cookoff) is a great project to get the ball rolling.”

Frenchie’s top chef and founder Greg Marchand echoed these sentiments, saying, “Food products are our resource and I teach to my cooks how to respect it. In our restaurants we try to use all the parts of the product, “de la feuille à la racine” (from the leaf to the root).”

Having food leaders understand the importance of this, helping to educate staff and patrons is a key part of tacking the challenges we are facing in the UK. WRAP estimates that that 8.3 million tones of food waste comes from consumers, 1.6 million tones from retailers, 4.1 million tones from food manufacturers, 3 million tones from restaurants, and 3 million tones from other groups.

UKHarvest is working hard to play it’s part in tackling the food waste challenge in the UK, by the redistribution of good surplus food and education programmes. This work is where the money raised from the CEO Cookoff will go, to operations currently in Chichester and Slough.

Find out more at www.ceocookoff.co.uk and follow us on Twitter for all the updates: @UKHarvest