Two Pantry Projects in Salisbury working together – Can you help them?

Both projects connect people with food, but in different ways, making them part of the tapestry of food projects across the city. The organisations are wholly different, but both involve incredible volunteers who help to make sure people across the city get access to good food.

Your Salisbury Pantry focuses on giving people on low incomes access to low-cost food shopping and was set up by the Salisbury City Council Communities Team in 2021 as a way to sustain the food response that was run from City Council community centres during the pandemic.

Separately, The Pantry Partnership, which has been running for over 10 years, has a key aim to save surplus food from going into the bin and to bring people together to cook and share food, particularly those who are isolated in our community. In a seemingly perfect partnership, one of The Pantry Partnership’s projects enables volunteers to come together to cook, chill and freeze meals made from surplus, which Your Salisbury Pantry stocks in their freezers for their clients.

Both projects require the hard work and dedication of many volunteers, and both are always looking for people to join their volunteer teams, and of course, with such similar names, it can be not very clear! Fiona Ollerhead, Director of The Pantry Partnership and Sarah Gregson, Communities Manager for the City Council, want to help people find the right project for them.

One of the Leaders of the Council, Cllr Victoria Charleston, said, “Your Salisbury Pantry is a fantastic scheme which can only operate with the help of the amazing volunteers. Whether they are a Van Driver, Shop Assistant or Donations Assistant, volunteers play a fantastic and vital role in supporting the community and helping members get the food that they need. With flexible hours available, we are always grateful for those who can spare some time at the social supermarket.”

Fiona Ollerhead, Founder and Director of The Pantry Partnership, said, “We are always looking for brilliant volunteers to help us in our kitchen - general support and washers up always welcome, and if you’re a chef we’d love to bring you on board to help out too. We have all sorts of roles where you can practice or lend out your skills and one of the most important things for us is making sure volunteers have a great time when they come to us.

"We are volunteer led and people help as it suits them, doing jobs that suit them whether that be social media, cooking, organising, collecting or delivering our surplus food; everyone is welcomed with open arms.

We’ve just finished doing cooking workshops at Bemerton St Michael’s and have more to come as well as ongoing similar events with other groups in the next few months, we continue to make our healthy nutritious frozen meals (made available via the social supermarket), our surplus jams and pickles can be found for sale at the Tourist Information Office and we also do catering for community and corporate events – all made from surplus by our brilliant volunteers.”

Your Salisbury Pantry is currently providing low-cost shops to between 75 and 90 households per week, and they hope to open for extended hours next month, which will need the support of more volunteers! The Pantry Partnership is able to do as many cooking projects as they have the volunteers for and have more in the pipeline.

To help either of these fantastic food projects, contact them directly.

The Pantry Partnership: info@thepantrypartnership.org or find us online or on social media.

Your Salisbury Pantry: salisburypantry@salisburycitycouncil.gov.uk