Since the Big Lunch was started by Eden Project co-founder Sir Tim Smit and Paul Twivy in 2009 it has been participated in by more than ten million people.
The lunch was enjoyed by 8.5 million people in the UK last year when the organisers worked with Buckingham Palace to support the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations.
Funded by the Big Lottery, the combined community event has been participated in by a variety of celebrities including London mayor Boris Johnson, soap actress Barbara Windsor and celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
After its first year in 2009, when the event was taken part in by less than a million people after the largest edible invitation was created to celebrate its launch, the Big Lunch has constantly grown in popularity.
More outlandish and bigger parties are planned each year, including a lunch at Buckingham Palace and outside the Prim Minister's house at No. 10 Downing Street.
But participation has not just been restricted to the UK, for instance in 2009, the people of Garstang, Britain's first fair trade town, held lunches simultaneously with a cocoa-farming community in Ghana and a group in the US.
Its global appeal has since expanded and last year it was participated in by people from 70 countries across the world.
In its five-year history the Big Lunch has recorded some outstanding success and with more than half the UK population now aware of the event and 82% of participants reporting back that they feel closer to their neighbours as a result, organisers are hoping that the next five years bring more growth along the same trend.
