Free Food Store: A Case for Alternative Organising and Diverse Economy

This ethnographic study aims to analyse the tensions, contradictions and possibilities around a free food store by drawing arguments from diverse economy framework. As the free food store relies on capitalist businesses donating surplus food, it emerges as an example of a non- capitalist alternative organisation that helps problematize assumptions around overproduction, waste, surplus and distribution of food in a consumeristic society. While the study contributes to growing literature around diverse economies from an organisational perspective by demonstrating co-existence of capitalist and non-capitalist dynamics around the free food store, it also sheds light on the dynamics of community organising to help people in need.