In 2016 Flourish House developed and opened a community café and kitchen, in partnership with Queens Cross Housing Association, to serve as a community hub for the people of Wester Common and as a source of employment for members of Flourish House. The project was very successful in creating meaningful job and training opportunities for members of Flourish House, providing vital paid employment opportunities to people on the margins of the job market.

The COVID pandemic hit the project and the wider community hard. It was during lockdown that the team witnessed first-hand the hardship and challenges experienced by the local community as they struggled to access affordable food. We felt we had to help, so building on our existing partnership with Queens Cross Housing Association, instead of closing our vital community hub, we reimagined the project to help tackle chronic food insecurity.

We opened our food pantry in March of 2021 with two clear objectives. Firstly, to tackle food insecurity through the provision of good quality food at low cost and secondly to secure the short-term future of Flourish House’s employability project. Thankfully, our action achieved both aims. The pantry itself uses a membership based model, created by The Scottish Pantry Network (The Scottish Pantry Network | Feeding Success Together) and Fareshare (FareShare | Fighting hunger, tackling food waste in the UK).

During it's first 18 months of operation the Pantry became an essential community hub, a place of positivity and hope as well as providing a dignified and sustainable approach to food security for the people of Wester Common and the surrounding area.

The success of the project convinced the team and the Flourish House board that a new charitable entity should be created with the express aim of tackling the root causes of poverty. An application was submitted to OSCR to create a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO) and in April 2022 The Courtyard Pantry Enterprise was officially established.

The Courtyard Pantry Enterprise’s objective is to reduce the effects of poverty using food as a vehicle for change. We do this by creating secure, well-paid jobs and training opportunities at our food enterprises and through the provision of good quality food at low cost to the local community at our food pantry.