London
From Trashwiki
London, the capital of England, UK, is a wonderful city for its free food.
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[edit] Markets
At all street markets, as with anywhere else, it is easy to gather free food when they're clearing up. However, the main market in London for dumpster diving is the New Covent Garden market, in Vauxhall. You can go any time between 10pm and 10am. In the last year, however, security guards in vans have made it much harder. They chase anyone collecting food and ask them to leave. They hand you a leaflet warning that it is a criminal offence to take the food. This has been enough to scare many people from collecting at the market. But some people may still manage it, if they are fast, or go at a time when the guards aren't present.
[edit] Give-away shops
The Food Not Bombs collective in Whitechapel often hold freeshops too, to give away free clothes, etc. to the community.
[edit] Supermarkets
Supermarkets are often difficult to dumpster dive at. Sometimes you can get very lucky with Boots, Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, Sainsburies and Tescos. But most of the time their rubbish is inaccessible, hidden away in a loading bay you can never access. Only a few of their stores place the rubbish in dumpsters on the street; but when you find a good one, it can feed you and your friends for months.
[edit] Bakeries and sandwich stores
Pauls is a fantastic bakery, found in various places over London (check their website for exact addresses), which throws out the most luxurious of breads, baguettes and cakes in bin bags outside the shop after closing time.
Starbucks, Pret a Manger, Costa and especially Eat are always reliable for their wasting of good food, but make sure that you beat the binmen to the food! The best time for Eat is around 7pm (sometimes earlier, depending on when it closes), and around 9pm-10pm for Starbucks. The best areas in central London for coffee shop finds are Mayfair, Holborn, and Goodge Street.
The sandwich chain 'Eat' throw out all of their remaining food at the end of the day, and except for a few of them who give to charity, it's always a very reliable source of yummy salads/sandwiches/cookies. Lately some of their branches have started destroying their food before they throw it in the bags, meaning the baguettes are partly out of their wrappers, the salads are opened up. Try the branches of Eat at Fenchurch Street, Liverpool Street, and Great Eastern Street.
