'Your Salisbury Pantry' is putting a call out to residents and businesses of Salisbury to help increase the capacity of the Pantry this winter as demand for the service continues to rise.
Your Salisbury Pantry is a social supermarket run by Salisbury City Council's Communities Team. The pantry offers access to low-cost, donated, grant-funded and redistributed food to residents who are finding rising costs increasingly difficult to manage.
Pantry members pay £5 for their shop and their shop is worth an average of £20 to £30.
The shop on Catherine Street has been open since April 2021 and for the first six 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 and Volunteers have worked tirelessly to find new food sources to keep up with the number of new members.
In September 2022, the Pantry saw the same sort of increased demand that has been experienced by food projects and banks nationally and is now seeing around 90 members shopping per week.
As a result of this increase in demand, the City Council’s Communities Team have announced a pause in new memberships to the Pantry while they work with the Salisbury Community to increase their supplies and volunteer base.
Sarah Gregson, Salisbury City Council’s Communities Manager said, “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."
If you can help Your Salisbury Pantry with a food collection or donation in your area or place of work, please get in touch.
Or, if you would like to join their pool of volunteer drivers, collecting food from across the city get in touch at: salisburypantry@salisburycitycouncil.gov.uk or call 01722 417100.
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