About Us

In the beginning...

Gussies began as a social eating café in April 2016.

We would cook and serve meals made with ingredients we received from Fareshare and local supermarkets, which would have ended up in landfill sites. 

For a small donation we welcomed members of the communities of Chesterfield and surrounding areas to dine and socialise. Any leftover and unused food was given to the diners for a further small suggested donation of £2 which helped cover our costs for our Fareshare membership, room hire and other essentials. 

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Why did we change our provision?

When Covid began to become a serious concern, the volunteers began to discuss what support we could be to the community. It was decided that we would use our Fareshare membership to provide food parcels to those that needed food and had been asked to isolate due to their health and vulnerabilities.

We could never have imagined the amount of demand that there would be, we were sending out food parcels 3 times per week and supporting over 300 households during each week at our peak. We had to increase the amount of food we were receiving from Fareshare and also apply for funding from many places. 

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The Pantry Shop

After the lock downs were lifted and life began to return to the new normal we had to look at where we went next to best support those households that had grown dependent on the free food parcels we had been delivering. 

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Through the team at Feeding Derbyshire and Feeding Britain we were supported to open a new solution that was being piloted - a community pantry. 

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The idea behind the pantry was to create a shop which was for members only, a shop where they could choose the food they wanted, which would include fridge/freezer items, fruit, veg, bread and bakery items, toiletries and of course cupboard essentials. They would get all of this for a set price per week. When we started the households would pay £5 to join and become a member and then they would pay £5 for 21 items + additional free items too. Each item came under a colour code dependent on its value in a standard supermarket.

 

The pilot was successful and went from strength to strength. Leading to our current provision that works with local partners to ensure we are supporting those who need us the most.