Caring for Care & The Cafe Fenton supporting People Pantry
The People’s Pantry was started back in March 2017 with the aim of supporting families in Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle with a three-day emergency supply of food, baby products and toiletries for those who find themselves without the basic living essentials they desperately need. We’re open every weekday between 11am and 1pm, families do not need to be referred in to us, just call us and we will help.
We’ve have wanted to offer a little extra to our families and have been looking into being able to provide maybe some fresh food options alongside the non-perishable goods. I was recently contacted by a local businessman named Rob who explained that he owns a couple of businesses in Stoke on Trent operating within the care sector one training company Caring for Care and the other a procurement company CFC Procurement specialising in food produce. And wanted to see if he can utilise his contacts and facilities to help some of the vulnerable families we support. His plan was to leverage his relations through the procurement business to get access to stock from their suppliers, this would get delivered to his offices in Fenton and then Ben at The Café Fenton which operate the Cafe within the building (Fenton Town Hall) and use their commercial kitchen to turn this into cooked meals. They would package the meals up and arrange collection or drop off ready for distribution to those who are vulnerable.
Of course with such an incredible offer to be able to provide that little bit extra for our families we were never going to turn this down so we arranged with some of our families to have these meals delivered by our Pantry volunteers. We started with a small amount to see how well it goes with a view to doing more month on month and to say the very least it has been a resounding success. The food looks absolutely incredible and we had some very happy families receiving the fresh meals on their doorstep.
In the short time we’ve been working together they have provided over 400 freshly cooked meals for our families, We can’t Thank Rob and his team enough for coming to us with such an incredible opportunity and look forward to working together even more to build on what we’ve started.
Not having a cooker at the moment makes it very difficult to cook, Alice provided me with pre-prepared, fresh meals for the whole family; I just can’t thank Alice enough for the amazing work they do!