The Drill Hall Pantry in Parkhead is a charity that allows its members access to good food at minimum cost. You can find the pantry within a beautiful old schoolhouse, a stones throw from Greencity HQ, where it is run by a social enterprise called Unity. They organise all sorts of initiatives to encourage members to eat more healthy foods, learn to cook and also help to reduce their waste. We were delighted to be able to make a donation to such a worthy cause, right within our own community.
1. Tell us about how it all started and a little more about The Drill Hall Pantry.
The community pantry was in the planning stage prior to COVID. During that unprecedented time we decided to have 3 pop-up pantries to give the community access to affordable, fresh and ambient food quickly during COVID.
We now have 2 permanent pantries.
The Parkhead Pantry relocated into a purpose built building in September 2019, and you can find the other one in Shettleston. We use Fareshare which gives the Pantry access to supermarket brands, for a membership fee. This buys us surplus stock, end of line products and incorrectly labelled food. We also happily accept donations from local food wholesalers like Greencity.
Members of our pantry pay £2.50 per visit, and receive approximately £12-£15 worth of food. They are able to choose items from five food categories.
Our friendly staff and volunteers are always on hand to support anyone to complete the membership form and help members with their £2.50 shop. The pantries are open to residents within Parkhead, Shettleston and Tollcross communities.
Membership entitles use of either or both of the pantries. On average the pantries support over 150 £2.50 shops weekly.
2. How many people are involved in your organisation?
Parkhead Housing Association financially supports the Pantries. Unity Social Enterprise was commissioned by Parkhead Housing Association to run both the pantries.
Unity do lots of other work along with running the pantry, including various projects across the central belt, and employs 60 + people.
Alongside our paid staff we have a number of volunteers without whom we wouldn’t be able to run the pantry so efficiently.
3. Tell us a little about the things you do to support the local community.
At Parkhead Pantry, we have a five station training kitchen, which allows us to cook surplus foods into soups, casseroles etc, helping us to limit our food waste. These meals become a part of the member’s £2.50 shop. The training kitchen also runs free memberships cooking classes, such as cooking on a budget, bulk cooking, beat the chef etc, and these classes support our membership but also local community groups such as SACRO, SAMH and local nurseries. The pantry and kitchen work very closely to ensure all food stuffs are used to reduce our carbon footprint, and we also run cooking and tester sessions encouraging residents to try different foods.
We have also introduced home cooking bags, which contain all the food that is needed to prepare a meal, together with recipe cards.
Recently in the Parkhead Pantry, we have introduced a Zero Waste section, and now encourage our members to bring along their own containers again reducing wastage. We do not supply bags for fruit or veg.
We also work in Partnership with the Wash House Gardens (a community garden project), who make their own compost with our food waste and cardboard. The Wash House Gardens supply us with their surplus veggies for our cooking classes, and as part of the member's £2.50 shop, and they're also running small drop in sessions to encourage people to grow their own food at home.
4. How do you think the lockdown has affected your organisation and your role in the wider community?
Unity also have a social enterprise café based in the Schoolhouse building, which has been impacted since it re-opened in our new venue at Parkhead. People have been more hesitant and withdrawn about attending community events. The Spoon Cafe, based is hosting free community events focused around food, one-pot-lunch pay what you like, and morning bingo with a free breakfast roll and hot drink.
As people have been more hesitant to go out, we have looked at providing drop in information services in the Pantry Pop Up. We are also encouraging local community groups to use the space and have recently been involved in a consultation of what people want within the community and we hope to host more of these community events. We feel that this has been important to support people whilst they are in the Pantry to local services such as Social Security Scotland, Welfare Rights, and CAB to name just a few.
5. What steps do you think need to be taken to improve health & wellbeing in your community?
We need to work more closely together to ensure everyone has access to fresh affordable foods. We need to encourage our members to cook and taste different foodstuffs and use more fresh and frozen vegetables on a weekly basis. Breaking down the barriers to cooking with vegan foods and allowing people to cook and taste how it feels to produce a more environmentally friendly meal would also be good, linking in with reducing our own food waste.
We'd like to expand our local partnership working with the Wash House Gardens, running more 'Grown Cook Eat' programmes, which have been very successful. Members grow the veggies at the garden, come to the training kitchen to cook them and then sit down to a lovely, freshly prepared meal.
We have a Pop Up Corner and we are looking at making better use of this space. We would like to have some 'Come Dine With Me' experiences and local members cooking their own speciality meals to support the local community.
6. You can pick one chef/person to come and work with you, who is it and why?
Jack Monroe - they have been very inspirational and do very similar work to the Pantry, addressing food poverty and raising awareness of issues around lack of fresh and affordable food.
Keep up with the Drill Hall Pantry at facebook.com/DrillHallPantry, and find out more about Unity Social Enterprise at unity-enterprise.com
