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Tuesday 11 October 2022
Your Salisbury Pantry – Help us make our membership pause temporary!
Your Salisbury Pantry is our City’s Social Supermarket run by the Salisbury City Council Communities Team, offering access to low cost donated, grant funded and redistributed food to residents who are finding rising costs increasingly difficult to manage. The shop on Catherine Street has been open since April 2021 and for the first 6 months were providing around 35 to 45 households a week with a low-cost shop. Since then, demand has consistently grown and the Pantry Manager, Communities Team with the Volunteers have worked tirelessly to find new food sources to keep up with the number of new members.
In September 2022, the Pantry has seen the same sort of increased demand that has been experienced by food projects, Pantry’s and foodbanks nationally, and is now seeing around 90 members shopping per week. Pantry members pay £5 for their shop and their shop is worth an average of £20 to £30.
“The good news is that we have been able to help support 649 people in the last month, including 283 children. It is a privilege to support all those people in balancing the demands on their income and now we need to rise to the real challenge of keeping up with demand” says Sarah Gregson, Salisbury City Council’s Communities Manager.
In this context The City Council’s Communities Team announce this week a pause in accepting new members to the Pantry while they work with the Salisbury Community to increase their supplies and volunteer-base.
Your Salisbury Pantry is putting a call out to the Residents and Businesses of Salisbury to work with us to extend the capacity of the Pantry this winter. If you can help us with a food collection or donation in your area or place of work, please get in touch. Or if you would like to join our pool of volunteer drivers, collecting food from across the city salisburypantry@salisburycitycouncil.gov.uk or call 01722 417100