Four Maidstone food hubs need no referral and no means test. Joining is free, a family order costs £8.50, and here are the days, addresses and how to sign up.
Four affordable food hubs now operate in Maidstone, and the thing most people get wrong about them is that you need a referral. You do not.
The Bread and Butter Thing runs hubs at Trinity, Park Wood, Shepway and Blackthorn. Maidstone Borough Council marked the charity’s tenth anniversary in a release published on 7 September, and that release states the terms plainly: “There are no joining criteria or means testing for the service or contract. This means anyone can use it for as long or as little as they need.”
That makes these hubs a different thing from a food bank, and the practical details are worth having in one place.
Where and when
The council publishes three of the four on its food support page, with addresses and collection days.
| Hub | Address | Collection |
|---|---|---|
| Trinity | 20 Church Street, Maidstone ME14 1LY | Tuesday from 1pm |
| Park Wood | Fusion Healthy Living Centre, 2-3 Cobb Way ME15 9XF | Wednesday from 2pm |
| Shepway | 1-2 Northumberland Court ME15 7LW | Thursday from 1pm |
| Blackthorn | Blackthorn, St Andrew’s Road ME16 9AN | Day not published |
Fusion Maidstone, the community partner for the Park Wood and Shepway hubs, confirms the same three days on its own site.
The Blackthorn hub is the gap. It opened in June as the fourth in the borough, which the council announced at the time. Three months on, the council’s food support page still lists only three hubs, and Blackthorn’s own website carries no page for it. We could not confirm its collection day from a first-party source, so we are not printing one. Text the charity, as below, and ask.
The council also runs a second, separate page called Food hubs and groups, listing food support ward by ward. The Bread and Butter Thing does not appear on it at all.
What it costs and how you join
The prices are set by bag size, and you pay on collection. The council’s page records:
- individual order, £5
- family order, £8.50
- large family order, £17
Cash, cards and Healthy Start vouchers are all accepted, and vegetarian options are available. A family order is up to three bags, mixing fresh fruit and vegetables, chilled items and cupboard staples such as pasta and cereals. The contents change every week because the food is surplus. The council says a family order is worth up to £35 of groceries.
Joining is a text message. The steps, from the council’s own page:
- Text 07507 237 311 with your full name, your postcode and the name of the hub you will collect from.
- You get a text two days before the collection date.
- Reply YES by 10am the next day to confirm the order.
- Collect on the hub’s collection day. Text CANCEL if you cannot make it, or reply NO to skip a week and stay on the list.
Membership is free, there is no contract, and you can use it as often or as rarely as you want.
The anniversary, and two numbers that do not match
The charity is ten years old this year, and Maidstone was its first operational base in the South East.
Vic Harper, its chief executive, said in the council’s release: “Over the past ten years we’ve unlocked the equivalent of 70 million meals, we’ve never moved out of a community and we’ve never missed a delivery.”
The council’s release also says the charity now supports “more than 100,000 households” through “more than 160 communities across England”.
The charity’s own website gives different figures. Its ten-year page says it supports “more than 10,000 households a week”. Its impact page says it “now supports 155 communities across 34 local authorities”, and that in 2025 it saved 9,005 tonnes of food from waste, the equivalent of 21.4 million meals, with 183,000 volunteer hours.
The household figures may well be measuring different things, a cumulative membership against a weekly one. The community counts, 160-plus against 155, are the same measure and do not agree. Neither source explains the gap, so we are reporting both as published.
The council’s part in it
Maidstone Borough Council backed the rollout of the hubs with a one-off investment approved by its Cabinet in December 2024, according to the June release. Councillor David Naghi, cabinet member for community cohesion and safety, said he was “pleased to see that large supermarkets are working with our partners to make an active effort in reducing food waste”.
The council has also produced a Community Cookbook of recipes built around the ingredients that turn up in the bags. It says demand was high enough that a reprint is on order and will reach all four hubs “in the near future”.
Blackthorn is running something adjacent and free. Its own site says an eight-week healthy cooking course starts on Wednesday 16 September, 10.30am to 12.30pm each week, in the training kitchen at St Andrew’s Road, ME16 9AN. Enrolment is on 01622 828374.
What it means for you
- You do not need a referral, a voucher or a benefits check. That is the single most useful fact here, and it is the council’s own wording.
- Order by text, two days ahead. Turning up on the day without having replied YES will not get you a bag.
- If you want the Blackthorn hub, ask when you text, because no day is published for it yet.
- If you can spare a Wednesday or Thursday morning, Fusion Maidstone says it needs volunteers to sort and pack at the Park Wood and Shepway hubs. Its page gives 01622 691177.
For other help with household costs in the borough, the council’s cost of living advice pages cover benefits, debt and energy. Our own Maidstone council tax bands page sets out what each band pays this year.
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