Every Saturday afternoon, more than 400 people crowd into the Holy Cross Tuckerbox, a food pantry for people with tight budgets. It sells everything from fresh fruit and vegetables and frozen meat and seafood to dog grooming products and toiletries, for only a third the price supermarkets charge. Yet its manager, lay minister Kirsty Baker, is adamant:

“We’re not a charity. We operate like a co-op. You pay for what you get here.”

Households pay $2 for a year’s membership, and purchase food with points (one point equals $1). Bread, fresh fruit and vegetables are free.

“Everything’s about dignity… You’re not lesser. You’re a valued person.”

The Tuckerbox is Canberra’s only food pantry open on a Saturday. Customers come from the other end of the city, and even from towns hundreds of kilometres away.

They include students, families, singles, people on pensions, frontline workers, nurses, and teachers.

Self-funded retirees — long-term residents of Ainslie before it became an expensive suburb, now struggling on pensions — tell Ms Baker they would not survive without the Tuckerbox.

Eighteen months ago, Ms Baker described food demand as “desperate” — and it is “still huge”. Customer spend has increased by 60 per cent in the last two years.

Some customers buy all their groceries from the Tuckerbox; only two customers access other food pantries.

Some families spend four hours travelling by bus to and from Tuggeranong, and one man in his eighties catches three buses every week.

Some travel from Murrumbateman and Goulburn, or as far as Nimmitabel, 152 km away.

“Everything you can save here, you then have money that might pay your electricity bill or buy something — to come out for a coffee, or go to the movies,” Ms Baker said. “You can do that, not every day, but just to feel like you’re part of normal life. Instead of just survival, it’s nice to have treats. It’s nice to be able to go out for dinner, or buy a birthday present.”

Despite the community benefits, the Tuckerbox runs on nothing — it is self-funded and voluunteer-run.

The Tuckerbox’s annual operating budget is around $200,000, but it provides close to $1 million retail of food every year — which customers simply cannot afford through other markets.

The Tuckerbox buys meat and vegetables from wholesalers, and sells them onto customers for less than what they paid, or receives donations from food rescue organisations like Foodbank NSW/ACT, OzHarvest, and SecondBite. In turn, it sells food to food relief charities such as HelpingACT.

Local gardeners bring in surplus pumpkins, apples, or herbs. The shelves might look abundant, but there are never enough fruit and vegetables: 70 per cent of customers turn up in the first half-hour, worried they will miss out.

“My thing is having access to healthy food,” Ms Baker said. “We’re going to end up with a health crisis because of the shortage of nutritious food.”

When people cannot afford healthy food, she explains, they change their eating habits: they skip meals, they eat carbs, and they consume empty calories to satisfy hunger and emptiness.

“It’s poor food choices, or no food choices,” Ms Baker said.

Food insecurity is bound up with the cost of living: wages and pensions do not keep up. After rent rates, insurance, and medical bills, “there’s no breathing space, there’s no tucking money away for a rainy day,” Ms Baker said.

There is not enough housing: in the 1990s, two people working at Woolworths could buy a house; now, they would struggle to rent an apartment.

Ms Baker knows of couples who work five jobs between them to pay $750 rents, toiling almost constantly, snatching only a few hours of sleep, while their bodies protest.

“There are no holidays, there’s no living; it’s existing. They’re busting a gut to exist. Why is that OK?”

Volunteers — some in their nineties — keep the Tuckerbox running, and more are needed, even if once a month.

“We’re very short of volunteers,” Ms Baker said. “There’s no breathing space.”

Customers come to the Tuckerbox not only for groceries, but for community and connection. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Canberra has experienced another epidemic: loneliness.

The Tuckerbox opens at 1pm, but some customers arrive at 9am, and sit under the trees outside, chatting.

“It shows they need this connection. People are willing to wait for hours because they’re talking with people,” Ms Baker said.

For some, a hug or a pat on the arm might be the only physical contact they get all week.

Maggie’s Café, run with St Margaret’s Uniting Church, opens from 10.30am to 3pm, serving coffee and cake. Meg’s Toybox (a toy library), a white elephant stall, and the Orange Sky laundry run alongside it.

Wednesday elevenses at Holy Cross (11am to 1pm) bring people together for conversation and boardgames.

“You get food, but it’s more than food; it’s company,” Ms Baker said. “Food is food, and good for you — but there’s more to it than that. It’s the whole social aspect.”

The Holy Cross Tuckerbox, Holy Cross Anglican Church Hackett, corner of Antill Street and Phillip Avenue, Hackett, is open Saturday 1-4pm, 50 weeks a year.