In April 2026, a nonprofit that supports trafficking survivors bought The Pantry, a longstanding grocery market in Fairfield, Connecticut, with plans to run the business as is, using it as a source of earned revenue and a place to create employment opportunities as part of its survivor model.
This is not a completely new venture for the organization, Partnership to End Human Trafficking (PEHT). It’s an expansion of existing social enterprise work, since PEHT already operates the PEHT Shop where trafficking survivors are empowered through employment opportunities. The interesting difference between the two ventures is that The Pantry is an established commercial operation with customers, employees, expenses and inventory that come with running a busy grocery business.
PEHT’s purchase of The Pantry offers an interesting case study: Can a conventional business successfully become part of a nonprofit’s mission infrastructure, generating income while creating a path to economic independence for survivors?
PEHT’s financial picture before The Pantry
Before PEHT purchased The Pantry, its finances were heavily dependent on charitable donations. Public FY2025 reporting shows that the organization reported $1.95 million in total revenue. Of that, $1.88 million—or about 96 percent—came from grants, contributions, and similar accounts. By comparison, the organization reported new income of $58,619 from fundraising events and $14,959 from sales of inventory.
PEHT is not entirely new to earned-income activities. The PEHT Shop sells handcrafted products made by trafficked survivors while also providing job-training and skills opportunities. But The Pantry is a very different scale and type of operation, and moves PEHT from a small enterprise to ownership of an established grocery business.
It’s still too early to tell whether this new model is working, but FY2025 figures give us a pre-acquisition baseline that shows just how dependent the organization was on contributed revenue and a benchmark for the future.
Why The Pantry?
There are two likely reasons that made The Pantry a desirable choice for the organization. First, it was an established Main Street business that had an existing customer base with suppliers, employees, and, more importantly, an operating infrastructure. Starting a social enterprise can cost thousands in startup expenses and takes time. The Pantry was the opposite.
The challenge will be integrating support and training for survivors while making sure the Pantry continues to meet the demands of its existing customer base.
A second motivator was that Katie Rolleri, CFO and COO of the organization, was also part of the family that owned the market for 23 years. Her uncle Andy Rolleri started it in 2003. “I had the inside information that he was looking to move outside the country,” Rolleri told Westfair Business Journal. “He’s retiring. We had a conversation about what it would be like for PEHT to acquire The Pantry. We spent a very long time vetting this.”
While the PEHT shop does give survivors job opportunities, The Pantry offers them a chance to work at a more established local business, which can be valuable experience. “On a daily basis, we see the impact that employment has on the survivors. To be able to step into a larger business and offer more employment opportunities and put funding back into our larger employment program is so significant to PEHT,” Rolleri explained.
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When a business becomes part of the mission
PEHT’s stated goal isn’t simply to make money from The Pantry. “The way we should think about it is instead of the proceeds going to individual owners, it’s going into a nonprofit that is doing some really awesome things in the community,” Rolleri said.
The organization sees The Pantry as another space where trafficking survivors can gain employment and develop economic independence. This is part of its three-part mission approach. The PEHT Shop gives survivors not only paid employment but also access to banking services, financial counseling, and help obtaining identification and work authorization. PEHT also gives survivors training in skills needed in the workplace like time management, computer proficiency, résumé and interview preparation, and financial planning.
As The Pantry becomes part of PEHT’s model, a crucial question arises: What support will survivors need to turn a job pathway into true economic independence?
The Pantry will potentially expand on the existing infrastructure and give way to a broader range of roles extending beyond entry-level positions. For example, a graduate of PHET’s residential program who manages the PEHT Shop is expected to transition into a management role at The Pantry. The challenge will be integrating support and training for survivors while making sure The Pantry continues to meet the demands of its existing customer base.
Other survivor-focused enterprises offer useful lessons. PEHT is not the first nonprofit to connect survivor recovery with employment through social enterprise. Look at Thistle Farms in Nashville, Tennessee. Its social enterprise provides women survivors with free housing, healthcare, counseling, and job readiness training for two years. In its 2024-2025 reporting, Thistle Farms said its enterprises made 86,329 hours of meaningful employment possible.
Thistle Farm’s experience also highlights a challenge that goes beyond creating jobs. The organization said its goal was simply to employ women survivors to give them work experience but found this was not enough, so a formal Job Readiness program was created. As The Pantry becomes part of PEHT’s model, a crucial question arises: What support will survivors need to turn a job pathway into true economic independence?
How will PEHT know if The Pantry is a success?
The Pantry’s success cannot be measured by its sales alone. A grocery carries substantial costs from inventory and payroll to utilities and equipment. For PEHT, the more telling answer would be to look at how much revenue remains after those expenses and whether it’s providing the support it sought out. PEHT’s FY2025 figures will be a useful baseline, and the organization can then consider the number of survivors employed, the business’s profitability, the net revenue supporting the mission, and opportunities for survivor advancement.
PEHT’s acquisition also raises governance questions such as: who oversees the business, how does the board evaluate its performance, and what safeguards are in place if The Pantry loses money? As the organization moves forward with the running of The Pantry, its conflict-of-interest policies and decision-making process will offer a case study for other nonprofits seeking a similar venture.
