Y Pantri Glas - Llandeilo's zero-waste shop

Background

In Welsh, "glas" can mean both blue and green - so green fields "maes glas" and blue sea "môr glas".  We love that this encompasses our desire to help planet Earth, both land and sea. 

We are three Mums who live in or close to Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire.  We want our shop, Y Pantri Glas to become a destination shop in Llandeilo supplying sustainable foods, personal care and household care items where customers can fill their own containers and reduce their use of packaging. 

The shop will sell loose dried foods (dried fruit, nuts, seeds, pulses, cereals), herbs & spices and teas plus ethically produced non single-use-plastic covered items e.g. soap, deodorant and other personal care items, re-fill items like washing-up liquid and hand soap (we are looking for local producers).

Our vision is to offer the best quality foods and ethical lifestyle products to support our planet, our ecosystems, our communities and our lives.

We aim to inspire and excite people about wholesome food promoting good health for all.  By empowering and enabling people to make the right choices, we hope to bring a sense of discovery and adventure to food and household shopping that is inclusive to all in society.

We will source locally wherever possible whilst focusing equally on quality and affordability. Our aim is to make it easy to reduce use of single-use plastic when shopping for everyday provisions for the home pantry cupboard.

Even if you can’t donate, we’d appreciate a share on social media or with people you know – be part of our green dream team.

A little about us

Candace Browne (Co-founder and Director) Candace has a background in marine and environmental biology with over 20 years’ experience in sustainable resource management, sustainable farming and local food systems.  She is currently studying a master’s degree in Human Nutrition and is passionate about sustainable diets, foods as medicine and garden "weed" foraging - yum!  An avid problem solver, Candace is always looking for ways that her family can reduce waste at home which at the moment seems to be collecting it until she can find time to make it into something useful!  She is very excited that by shopping herself at Y Pantri Glas she will be taking home less plastic waste - another problem solved!.

Cathy Pearce (Co-founder and Director) After a career in IT, Cathy escaped from the clutches of London to join her family in Wales with a desire to change career and get more involved in good local food - both eating and growing. A period of packing veg boxes and weighing out wholefoods lead to thoughts of how to reduce our dependence on single-use plastics and other wasted packaging.

Louise Nugent (Co-founder) Louise has developed a large range of skills and knowledge to cope with her large energetic family - give her half a dozen eggs and she is likely to make mayonnaise and lemon meringue pie rather than just a cake! At the moment, she is sewing our special tote shopping bags - definitely multi-talented.

What is the funding for

We are crowd funding to help raise the money to start up our shop which includes:

• Purchase of gravity dispenser bins as well as scoop bins
• Robust shelving for the gravity dispensers 
• Containers for the teas, herbs and spices. 
• Integrated self-service scales and central till system
• We want to invest in a Nutramilk machine for making fresh nut butters and nut milk
• We also want to invest in a Mockmill grinder, so we can grind fresh flours on demand e.g. buckwheat or chickpea/gram flour
• Initial stock selection will be a linked to how much we raise.  We would like to start with a wide selection, so customers have plenty of choice.

We have applied for Carmarthenshire Business Start-up support.  We will also look to recycle or upcycle other suitable furniture for the shop. 

The shop is set up as a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee.  Whilst we will initially work as volunteers, once up and running we will operate a proper business paying our staff a living wage.