Founder: "I would dearly love to sit alongside every Starbucks in the city and give them a doing, in the nicest possible way!"
Launch Foods, a Glasgow charity founded by former banker and restaurateur Craig Johnson, is closing in on providing children from across the city with one million free meals.
Earlier this year the charity secured a property on Cresswell Street – just off Byres Road – to open its second Launch Coffee café, adding to its site on Bothwell Street.
Talks are also underway on a third location and with the extra sales, Launch Foods now hopes to exceed the one-million-free-meals milestone in the next few weeks.
Founder Craig Johnson said: “We're chasing down one million free meals, which one side of me thinks is great. The other, the proud Scot in me, thinks it's atrocious because it shouldn't be happening – but I suppose that applies to every charity.
“We need to do more, though, because that allows me to fund the charity and its activities feeding kids. I would dearly love to sit alongside every Starbucks in the city and give them a doing, in the nicest possible way!
“There are other ways we can feed even more children, with the right support. I don't view launch as a success story – nowhere near it. We're still in challenging times but the challenges are part of the journey. Because if it was too easy – and it shouldn’t be – then it probably wouldn’t be worth it.”
Launch Foods began with Johnson going to schools across Glasgow in an American-style Airstream Rocket caravan, providing children with free meals. Big food and drink companies donate surplus products, which are then used to produce nutritious meals and snacks at the charity’s base in Anniesland Business Park.
The first Launch Coffee opened on Bothwell Street in 2022, helping to provide a regular income stream to fund an after-school meal for every pupil at six Glasgow primaries. The addition of another cafe has increased its ability to feed more children in different parts of the city.
Johnson previously worked for Royal Bank of Scotland and owned three restaurants in Glasgow. Talking about the founding of Launch, he said: “I happened to be watching the news one evening, and they were talking about food surplus, which is madness – tonnes of food being disposed of; inefficiencies in the food sector. I'm getting a bit grumpy, so I turned the channel only to watch STV News and they talked about food scarcity, showing images of Glasgow.
“I didn't quite understand the term and I thought they'd got the wrong video, until they explained that one in four kids in the city are living in poverty and in certain parts it’s one in two. Given what I'd watched a couple of minutes beforehand, I thought, how can I connect these things? But doing it in a way that avoids the stigma that was clearly apparent.
“And that’s how Launch came about. Day one, I got myself one of these big American Airstream food trucks and we started providing free food to the kids in various parts of the city. I promote it to the kids that they are helping us with the environment, and we feed every child at the end of the school day to avoid any stigma.”
Johnson was speaking on the Human Firstpodcast, a series from financial advice service Murphy Wealth.
You can find it by searching for Human First on all major platforms, including Spotify and YouTube.
