Food Pantry Food Bank Addi Road, Marrickville

Addi Road is a food pantry and community centre in Sydney's Marrickville. Not only can anyone purchase low cost groceries but they also have a weekly event called Wednesday Night Lights that offers a whole range of free services from legal advice, medical, laundry and hairdressing. It's open to everyone so come along and see what is available at Addi Road.

About Addi Road Community Centre

Mr NQN's sister Araluen first told me about Addi Road and she was put onto them via Manu's girlfriend Manuela. Previously I had visited the site to go to the Sunday markets and Koshari Korner, the Egyptian eatery but little did I know that there was so much going on here. The Addi Road Community Centre is located on Addison Road in Marrickville, on 9 acres of Crown Land that was previously used as army barracks to train soldiers that were sent off to fight in Europe. In 1975 it was given back to the community during the Whitlam government due to strong community campaigning by the Italian and Greek residents. Now the Addi Road community centre is the long term lease holder.

Addi Road's board, CEO and 10 to 15 paid staff are responsible for managing and leasing the buildings - all profits go back into the food pantry or to fix any issues in the buildings that require a lot of repair as they were constructed in the early 1900's. Pot holes are also a regular problem here as the site used to be a swamp. Historically it was also an indigenous meeting point used for trade as it was a food basin. Other tenancies at the complex include a gym, a recording studio for music or podcasts, art gallery and an upcoming cafe. There are around 10 paid staff and 30-40 volunteers that range from the drivers that collect food to ones that sort through fruit and vegetables for sale and those that work at the pantry checkout and sort shelves.

The Food Pantry Experience

The heart of Addi Road is their food pantry. Open from 12-4pm Monday to Friday (open late til 7pm on Wednesday) they also have a Camperdown location that opens on Saturdays. Anyone can purchase from the pantry and there are no questions or means testing. All of the pantry items have points written on them - 2 points means a $1 price tag and there are a range of staples like various types of cereals to meat, milk, cheese, frozen meals, tinned goods and toiletries. Some items have a limit of 1 per person like meat, milk and eggs. You can pay via credit card or cash and bags are provided or you can bring your own.

There are some items that I haven't seen before like candied jalapenos, Barilla Amatriciana and Tonno (tuna) pasta sauces. If you are hesitant about buying from them because you don't want to take something someone else can use, they actually encourage people to buy as this is as much a way to avoid food wastage as a way to feed people. "There is always enough," says Programs Manager Olivia Wilson-Zarganis and this is evident from seeing the freezers filled with organic chicken, milk and beef.

Once you've made a purchase from the pantry you then have access to free bread, fruit and vegetables. There's a large range, not unlike a regular market with everything you could want from basics like onions, carrots and potatoes to fresh turmeric, bright yellow capsicum peppers, organic bananas, fresh curry leaves and chillies. My total is $9.50 for all of this food (I didn't take any bread as I had plenty already).

I also visited the Camperdown location the following Saturday as we just happened to be in the area around noon. While the store is smaller (and has a small queue to manage congestion), I found some incredible items there from burrata cheese, New Zealand smoked salmon, whole pork belly roasts, fresh blackberries, Sonoma and Bonfire Bakery breads and those incredible tiny Portuguese tarts (more on them later). This entire haul below was $19.50 and I could have had much more fruit and vegetables but our crisper was full already.

In the past they toyed with the idea of making hampers but the whole idea is that it is designed just like a regular grocery store where you just pick what you want. Olivia describes it as a "A dignity of choice, we don’t want to assume what people want." Initially Addi Road's customers were those that were in between work or unhoused but in the last couple of years they've found that a lot of their customers have full time jobs and just need a hand with increased cost of mortgages. A lot of customers are also students, particularly international students. Some may assume they have a lot of money but in reality the students are surprised at the price of food in Australia.

Behind the Scenes: The Kitchen

Heather Hancock is Addi Road's Head Chef and she works three days a week creating meals using donated food. Previously she was working in marketing and advertising in New York but then moved here and met and married her Australian husband. But then, "I was in my 40s and I had a little mini midlife crisis and went, 'I don't really want to be doing this. I really want to be cooking.' So I took a job at the local butcher shop and it went from there," she says.

Every day that she comes in, she has no idea what sort of food they will work with. "It's like cooking a mystery box," says Heather although she has around 10-15 recipes that she rotates between. To make that point, a volunteer Rai comes in with an enormous sheaf of curry leaves from her garden. Heather excitedly takes these as she knows what she'll use them for.

Some meals are made for the freezer section and sold for $3.50 each and all are made from scratch. She switches between vegetarian and meat depending on what is donated. "We're breaking the veg, we are doing the spice mixes. You can't always depend on 100% donated, but we're pretty close to that. We rescued like 80,000 tons of food a year and a lot of it would go to landfill," explains Heather. Every day Heather and her team of volunteers make 200 meals to go into the pantry on Tuesday and Thursday and on Wednesday nights they cook for Wednesday Night Lights, a seated dinner that feeds around 100 to 150 people.

Wednesday Night Lights: Community Services

Wednesday Night Lights is the brainchild of Yiana Roumeliotis, the community and social impact manager at Addi Road. "I feel so proud of it. It's grown so much in the last two years. It just kind of started from an idea because I had heard about Street Side Medics which is the free mobile GP service. We thought it would be a really good idea to have them come, but the timing didn't work because they're volunteer based and all of their nurses and doctors usually are working through the day," explains Yiana.

Instead they decided to have the pantry open for extended hours on Wednesday nights. "We decided let's just make it happen. Let's get the doctors in, we can keep the pantry open late, and see what this becomes, and it's grown a hell of a lot since then," says Yiana.

Services Available

Now Wednesday Night Lights has a rotation of services. Every week they have Street Side Medics and Orange Sky Laundry that do free clothes washing and Four Voices offers social support and helping people with digital connections so if people don't have a computer they can use one of their laptops. Every fortnight Marrickville Legal Centre gives free legal advice. Once a month The Feel Good Project give free hair and beauty services which is extremely popular and Advara Heartcare does free heart scans.

"We found that a lot of families were coming. It's educational, it's safe, and really allows the caregivers to either just have a moment for themselves. You can have dinner in peace and know that your children are being watched, or to just access the services safely without having to really think, 'Oh my God, where are my kids right now when I want to go and see the doctor or I want to talk to the legal service'," says Yiana.

As part of their new program for kids, they cook a lunchbox snack from rescued food from the pantry and take it home along with the recipe (last week's lunchbox snack was banana bread). This is designed to show the cycle for food and environmental justice. For teens there are anti racism workshops and Addi Sounds which is a music program. There are also mentor programs for those that express interest in a particular vocation. One may want to become a chef so they arrange for them to work in a kitchen. The cafe also serves as an employment and training centre and the Addi Road staff also offer vocational support helping young people create CVs and clothes and to gain paid work experience.

The Wednesday Night Lights dinner starts at 6pm and is located just outside the pantry where they set up long tables. The first bus to arrive is The Feel Good Project hair salon where people put their names down for a haircut. Then Four Voices arrives - they started in Brisbane 5 years ago and they invite people to have a cup of tea and coffee to help build a rapport. On a busy summer night they can talk to 15-20 people on a Wednesday night. Orange Day Laundry is busy doing loads of laundry for people. The staff lay out pastries in the centre of the tables for people to help themselves to.

The Dinner Experience

The Street Side Medics truck arrives at 6pm and by then Heather and her team have all of the food ready. Tonight's meal is a vegan jalfrezi curry with basmati rice, garlic bread with a dressed green salad.

The food is nutritious, warming and tasty and there's also cups of piping hot beef and rice soup to help stave off the cold. People congregate around the outdoor heaters to chat. Many get second helpings of food. Dogs are not only welcome, but encouraged.

Afterwards, there's also dessert and everyone eagerly looks forward to a little treat. There are delicious donuts from Grumpy's donuts and mouth-watering tiny Portuguese custard tarts served warm with a perfectly creamy custard centre and crisp pastry. They are followed by servings of warm apple crumble.

There is a real mix of people and it looks like any event in the Inner West. Some arrive looking like they just came from a work meeting with high heels and trench coats and others are casually dressed. The staff chat with people and offer some brand new blankets and sleeping bags.

Yiana says, "A lot of people feel that this is the highlight of their week. Once I remember it had been quite a long day for me, and I was packing up and it was well past eight o'clock when we say we're going to finish. We never kick people out. We always just say, you know, we'll pack up around you if you want to stay. But it was well past eight. I was really tired thinking to myself, 'Oh, my God, I just want to go home.' And someone who comes every week came up and just said, 'I just want to say thank you. I look forward to this every single week. Just because I can come and have dinner and I can talk to my new friends.' We all eat dinner together and people play Uno, and there's kids running around doing our kids' program."

So tell me Dear Reader, do you ever use a food pantry like this? Do you have any tips on saving money on groceries?