Archive for year: 2022

Last updated 26 March 2025

Affordable food and drink on campus

Great Food at Leeds (GFaL) is delighted to be offering a range of quality food and drink options for the University community at affordable prices.

We are passionate about making sure there’s a diverse range of inexpensive meal options available for you to enjoy on campus. All of the meal options below are available for £3.25 or less* from either the Refectory or across GFaL operated cafes on campus.

Save on breakfast

Star your day right with breakfast at the Refectory. Available right up to 11am on weekdays and 11:30am on weekends.

• Breakfast sandwich £2.95 – Choose from bacon, sausage, vegetarian sausage or egg
• Hashbrown bites £1.50 – These tasty bites of crispy golden goodness are a great treat to start the day
• Porridge £1.20 – A hearty bowl of porridge to fuel a long day of lectures, sport and studying… for an affordable £1.2o

You can also grab a full English breakfast (vegetarian full English also available) for just £4.95!

Lunchtime favourites

Our daily lunch special for £2.95 at the Refectory is available on weekdays from 12-2pm. Enjoy a variety of comforting dishes, changing daily.

Warm up with our soup of the day for £3.25! Served with artisan bread for dipping, our favourite is butternut squash and sweet potato! Available from the Refectory and our cafés on campus.

In the mood for pizza? Grab a slice for £2.20. Available from the Refectory.

Go one further, tackle food waste and save money!

We are proud to be part of the Too Good To Go community.

Download the Too Good To Go app and get connected to our food outlets on campus that have unsold food surplus.

You can find the Refectory and many of our cafes on the Too Good To Go app, place an order and rescue a Magic Bag before closing time. Food offerings range from sandwiches to hot daily specials. You don’t know what you are going to get, but the bag of food costs 50% (or more!) less than the retail price.

*The price of Too Good To Go Magic Bag varies depending on contents.

This giveaway has now closed.

To celebrate 2,000 followers on Instagram, we have launched a 2K Instagram giveaway! We’re giving you the chance to win £50 credit to spend on delicious food and drink in any of our Great Food at Leeds locations on campus.

To enter you need to follow the instructions on the giveaway post found on the Great Food at Leeds Instagram.

Terms and conditions:

1. Great Food at Leeds will use any personal data submitted only for the purposes of facilitating the prize draw
2. All entries must be received by Thursday 20 October 2022 at 11:59pm
3. All correctly completed entries will be entered into a prize draw which will take place on Friday 21 October 2022. The winner will be drawn at random
4. One entry per person allowed, on completion of liking the post, commenting on the post and following the Great Food at Leeds Instagram account. You may have an additional entry by sharing the post to your Instagram Story
5. No entrant may win more than one prize
6. Giveaway is open to all University of Leeds staff and students
7. The prize is £50 Great Food at Leeds credit. Great Food at Leeds credit redeemable against food and drink in any of the Great Food at Leeds operated locations on campus, this excludes Caffé Nero sites on campus. The winner must provide their University email address and download the GFaL Club app to obtain the credit. Credit will be valid for 6 months. No cash alternative is possible
8. Prizes are not transferable or exchangeable. No cash alternative is possible
9. The winner will be notified via the Great Food at Leeds Instagram stories from Friday 21 October 2022. Great Food at Leeds will make a reasonable attempt to contact the winner, but reserve the right to draw a substitute winner if this is not possible
10. By entering the prize draw, you agree to participate in any reasonable promotional activity, including photographs and audio and/or visual recordings, if you are selected as a winner
11. Please note that Instagram are not responsible for any element of this promotion and has in no way sponsored, endorsed, or administered this promotion

Good luck!

Celebrating two star Fairtrade status!

We are delighted that the University of Leeds has again achieved a Fairtrade University award, after being audited for the academic years 2020/21 and 2021/22.

The University has maintained its Fairtrade University status since 2005. This helped Yorkshire to be named the first Fairtrade region in the country.

At Great Food at Leeds, we are passionate about Fairtrade and have been responsibly sourcing and selling Fairtrade food and drink products in our outlets since 2003!

What is the award and why is it important?

This prestigious award is delivered as a partnership between the Fairtrade Foundation, the National Union of Students, and Students Organising for Sustainability (SOS-UK). The Fairtrade University and College Award requires students to engage in partnerships with their institution and students’ union to achieve the award.

University of Leeds have been awarded Fairtrade University two star status. The award recognises a broad range of activities undertaken in the University which work towards a more just, equal and sustainable world for all.

This includes working to raise awareness with students of the issues related to ethical and sustainable consumption and increasing the availability of Fairtrade products in outlets on campus.

Students were recruited as volunteer auditors to determine if Fairtrade status could be awarded. The students were given training, equipping them with transferrable skills and experience in conducting an audit.

The award is a testament to the collaborative efforts of staff and students from a plethora of services and schools across the University. They have worked together to meet the award criteria, in areas including procurement, awareness raising and campaigning activities.

What is Fairtrade and how can you get involved?

Fairtrade aims to tackle the injustices of conventional trade and ensure that their farmers have decent working conditions and prices for the crops they grow.

To find out more about Fairtrade, what Great Food at Leeds did to support Fairtrade Fortnight earlier this year and how you can get involved, check out our round up post from Fairtrade Fortnight 2022.

Focus on fighting food waste

Great Food at Leeds is proud to be part of the war on food waste. As part of Leeds University Union (LUU) Climate Week 2022, we want to put fighting food waste in the spotlight, sharing what we are doing to support this movement and ways you can get involved.

What is Climate Week?

Climate Week 2022 is taking place from Monday 21 – Friday 25 March. It’s the second year of this exciting campaign after its launch in 2021, and there are lots of opportunities for University staff and students to engage with sustainability at LUU. The three themes for this year’s event: climate justice, climate education and eco-anxiety.

At Great Food at Leeds, we are excited to be supporting the event as sustainability is a key value of our service. Managing food waste plays a huge part in running our service sustainably and combatting climate change.

Why is food waste a problem?

Food waste is a global problem, it occurs all around us – in the home, in supermarkets, restaurants, pubs and cafés. A whopping 3.6 million tonnes of food is wasted by the food industry every year in the UK!

Most wasted food in the UK ends up in landfill, which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and impacts climate change. The worst part is that a huge 2 million tonnes of the food that goes to waste is still edible!

How is Great Food at Leeds tackling food waste?

We are proud to be part of the Too Good To Go food waste movement – a mobile application that connects customers to food outlets that have unsold food surplus.

You can find the Refectory and many of our cafes on the Too Good To Go app, place an order and collect a Magic Bag before closing time. Food offerings range from sandwiches to hot daily specials. We have saved almost 600 meals already in 2022!

Next time you fancy some food on campus, why not download the app and rescue a Magic Bag of surplus, unsold food and save food waste!

How can you help fight food waste?

Planning meals and not buying too much food is a good place to start, but when you do buy too much there are creative ways to use this up!

Our Senior Head Chef, Lisa, has provided some top tips for using up fresh ingredients from the back of the fridge and giving food leftovers a new lease of life!

• Leftover Bolognese sauce: Why not try making this into a chilli? Add some fresh chilli, ground cumin and paprika, serve with rice and top with soured cream or natural yogurt. Alternatively, make this into a lasagne inspired dish by layering the sauce with sheets of pasta or cooked pasta shapes and top with cheese before baking.
• Vegetables: If you find yourself with lots of vegetables that need using up, try making a vegetable soup. Roughly chop up whatever is available to you, root vegetables, greens or anything in between and cook in stock. Have it chunky or blend to smooth perfection, adding a potato will help make it creamy. You can also add some dried lentils to pack this with protein, too!
• Fruit: Its grocery shopping day, the cupboards are bare, but you still need a nutritious breakfast… it’s time to whip up a smoothie! Add the last, over ripened banana to a blender with some berries (fresh or frozen). Pour in milk of your choice or fruit juice and add some porridge oats. Whizz it up and enjoy!

Do you have a food waste regular offender, lurking in the fridge at the end of each week? Need some inspiration on how to make the most of it?

Get in touch via our social media channels or drop us a line to gfal@leeds.ac.uk and Chef Lisa will be happy to provide some ideas on how to save this from becoming food waste!