Introduction

While countries with widespread existential poverty need to fight hunger (for example, Rocha, 2014), this issue no longer seemed to be a problem for the German welfare state. As in other welfare regimes in the 20th century, issues of survival have ceased to determine the social policy agenda, being replaced by questions of social and cultural participation. Having enough to eat has been regarded as a self-evident precondition of social inclusion. It is widely understood that the welfare state has to enable or care for people through its programmes of welfare provision in such a way that hunger does not become an issue that would need an extraordinary social intervention. Therefore, the massive boom in food charities in European welfare states since the 1990s has been surprising, at least at first glance.

Food charity in the German context is mainly represented by organisations called ‘Tafel’. This can be literally translated as ‘dinner table’. Tafel initiatives currently dominate the debate about food charity in Germany, while other forms are discussed much less, both politically and in society in general. Other forms of food charity in Germany might include soup kitchens or food aid at social service institutions (for example, free meals for users). Beyond charity, we can also find self-organised initiatives (for example, food sharing organisations) and for-profit forms (for example, charity clothes shops). Tafel initiatives started collecting and distributing excess food in Germany in the early 1990s, particularly following the example of voluntary food assistance activities in the US. During the first decade of these activities, Tafel initiatives experienced moderate growth, which has been followed by rapid expansion since the middle of the first decade of the 21st century. This development correlates with fundamental social policy changes initiated during 2003–05 (when the so-called Hartz-Gesetze – a new law – attempted to implement the concept of a social investment state and workfare paradigm at the federal level). According to the official numbers published regularly by Tafel Deutschland eV, while the number of organisations has more recently stabilised, it has still shown a slight increase, to 934 member initiatives with more than 2,100 outlets in 2017 (more detailed numbers will be discussed later).