After 10 years, The Pantry Partnership is closing its doors.

Director Fiona Ollerhead said when the social enterprise was set up, the goal was to raise awareness about surplus food and how it could be used to help people in need and how food could help bring the community together.

She said: “Over ten years, those objectives which we’ve helped lead have been largely put back onto the public agenda, and so as a social enterprise what we want to do is to work to embed that more in the community rather than to be led by one organisation.

“It’s almost kind of like we’re trying to hand it over to the people of the charities and organisations in the city rather than be an operational organisation that just kind of does the same thing all the time.

“Ten years ago people thought food surplus was kind of about mucky food. That’s really what people thought of it and we hope we’ve really helped change that perception and we’ll help other organisations to try to embed that more.”

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Fiona said The Pantry Partnership’s mission to raise awareness has seen significant progress in the decade since The Pantry Partnership’s founding, with charities across the city ready to take the lead.

She said: “It’s the right time to say you can do it on your own now. It’s kind of like letting the child that’s grown up, the baby’s grown up and it’s now an adult that can stand on its own two feet. It doesn’t necessarily need a leader anymore.”

Over the next six months, The Pantry Partnership will be finishing the final touches in its mission of enabling organisations across the city to carry out the task of maximising the use of surplus food and building social cohesion around communal meals.

Fiona said: “It’s the end of an era and we are a bit sad to shut up shop, but we know this is the right thing to do to ensure a lasting legacy in the city.

“We’ve worked hard for many years, achieved so much, met some fascinating people, and had a lot of fun along the way too. There was a low level of awareness about surplus food when we started out and we believe we’ve played a key role in raising awareness of food as a force for good in communities up and down the country. With that in mind, it’s now time to hand over the baton to other organisations.”