An affordable food scheme which offers £35-worth of quality food for just £7.50 is expanding across Kirklees to help families with the cost-of-living crisis.

The Bread and Butter Thing (TBBT) is a national charity which works closely with supermarkets and other food suppliers to help communities with their weekly shopping.

Kirklees Council – supported by Huddersfield-based Cummins Turbo Technologies – has teamed up with TBBT to open three community hubs in Dalton, Sheepridge and Chickenley in Dewsbury.

Two more hubs are in the pipeline – including one at Howden Clough Community Centre in Batley – and Kirklees Council has revealed it is in talks with the charity over a second van which would allow another five hubs to be set up across the district, helping more people in need.

TBBT isn’t a food bank, it’s a membership scheme and for just £7.50 members’ shopping bags are filled with a minimum of £35-worth of quality nutritious food. Each week members access three bags of produce including fresh fruit and veg, chilled food for the fridge and cupboard items such as pasta and cereal.

Families can use their NHS Healthy Start vouchers and low-cost period products are also available.

TBBT is expanding across the country and the hub opened at Chickenley Community Centre in Chickenley in March was the first in Yorkshire. Since then hubs have opened at Dalton & Rawthorpe Library and The Chestnut Centre in Sheepridge.

The service is created from surplus food, the sort that often ends up going to waste as it’s wrongly labelled or there’s simply too much of it.

TBBT works with supermarkets, factories and farms to re-distribute the surplus and cut waste. As a result the kind of food products vary week to week, ensuring plenty of variety.

Mark Game, TBBT chief executive, said: “TBBT is about creating routes out of poverty and creating resilient communities. Our members tell us that over 80% of them have previously had to skip meals to feed their families.

“By using TBBT, most save £25 a week on their food budgets with the added benefits of better quality and a bigger variety of food. This leads to healthier lifestyles and puts money back in people’s pockets.

“We also build bespoke eco-systems of support for each hub, bringing in experts to offer help and advice in everything from housing to health, ensuring that we are maximising people’s opportunities locally.

“And the icing on the cake is that we save tonnes of surplus edible food from going to waste.”

Clr Paul Davies, Kirklees Council’s Cabinet member for corporate services, said he’d visited the hub in Dalton and praised the work of the volunteers describing the scheme as “very impressive.”

He said talks were underway to bring in another van to expand the service to another five locations.

“Clearly, it’s not solving all the issues around affordable food but it is excellent,” he said. “It’s not a food bank. They call themselves members.

“It’s £7.50 to get £35-worth of food and I was very impressed with the quality of food. It’s not end of date food or anything like that.

“We will be working closely with the TBBT team to help make this project a success.”

Joining the Bread and Butter Thing is simple, there is no joining criteria. Anyone who would like to become a member to access the affordable food service can send an email or text to hello@breadandbutterthing.org or text 07860 063304. Alternatively, there is an application form and more information at www.breadandbutterthing.org/contact.

Once registered, members will receive a weekly text with details on where and when they can collect their produce – and the first week is free.