M&S Stevenage

The Hertford Pantry has been set up to provide fresh and ambient food to local residents. The fresh food will be donated by local supermarkets and will be given to anyone who wants it. This help people struggling to make ends meet and prevents food waste. The second stream of ambient food will be bought with money from grants and fund raising. This food will be provided to people who declare they need it. There is no formal criteria. We will also provide food and recipes bagged ready for families who are in urgent need. The pantry will open Monday 1-2pm, Wednesday 1.30-2.30pm and Saturday 11-12 noon. The Saturday session is to enable those who are working to access the food.

The Ickleford Community Larder CIC is a community project run by volunteers. The larder was started in July 2020. We are here to support the local community with essential food basics and redistribute surplus food from the local area to relieve food poverty and prevent food going into landfill. Our Larder runs from St Katharine’s Church Ickleford, every Sunday. We welcome anyone and everyone. We don’t means test. We believe that everyone should be able to access all the food they need, and we are all about the community. There are two arms to our community larder, rescue food and larder basics. Each week our team of volunteers drive to local supermarkets to collect surplus food that has reached its best before date. This food, though perfectly fit to eat, would be thrown away if it wasn’t collected. Our food rescues are helping to reduce carbon emissions and reducing landfill. The donations we receive from our food rescuers help fund our Larder basics. We provide a larder basic box containing beans, soup, pasta, tinned tomatoes, tinned meat, jam, UHT milk and biscuits. Purchasing the food for the larder basics from the grants and donations we receive

In Partnership with Our Lady Immaculate Catholic Church we are opening a "My Local Pantry" to support local families in North Herts. We believe that nobody should go hungry. The Pantry is based on a Social Supermarket model where the community become members and for a small weekly fee they are able to shop at affordable prices enabling them to become more financially sustainable. We will also be offering debt, housing advice and other support services where needed. We will also have healthy eating/budget recipe cards available to help broaden food choices. We want to give away as much fruit, veg and nutritious food as possible. This is not a foodbank model but is a model aimed at reducing food insecurity. We will be open on a Friday from 2-4pm and Saturday 1-3pm and we will be operating in the Scout Hut in the carpark of the Catholic Church. We need plenty of fresh and chilled foods, flowers, plants, bread etc. "Best before" dates are fine but we can't take any "use by" dates. We are a registered food business and have corporate fridges & freezers to store the food.