It has long been an ambition of Salisbury Foodbank to provide food beyond the standard food parcel.

This is a request we have also had from many of our donors.

A small project team set about planning for this in 2021 - We came across hurdles and barriers to delivering a FRESH project. A few examples being extra storage in all our sites, heightened food safety, stock rotation and wastage concerns and transporting cool boxes. We thought we had hit a brick wall when out of the blue visiting another foodbank in our network who had experienced the same issues, they spoke to their local greengrocer and agreed a delivery model. The foodbank provide the names and addresses, the greengrocer delivers, the foodbank pays the invoice.

WIN win. our eyes lit up at the simplicity of the delivery model that until then we had not even contemplated! All those hours we spent re-arranging the warehouse to accommodate cold storage nightmares over with! The food doesn't even enter our supply chain!

Fast forward 3 months and we had identified an amazing local partner in Central Fruits to enable us to provide healthy fresh fruit and veg to people accessing the foodbank, to compliment the standard emergency food parcel. The food is great quality, locally produced and seasonal. People we have supported with this are saying the offering has lasted them up to 7 days.

I was quiet adamant every parcel contained potatoes due to their versatility. This offering is completely free to the end user and Central fruits offer us a substantial discount for the food and delivery service.

We piloted this in 3 of our settings and successfully rolled out to all foodbank centre setting in 2023.

Here are some snippets of how its changes peoples lives so far.

We want to do more. As a charity we do not have an endless pit of money, we relay on our generous donors and supports to make projects like this happen. We are desperate to continue this service but we need your help to make this healthy fresh food offering go further. to reach more people.