30 August 2022

Convenience store makes one last donation

Five and a half cages of food, drink and other goods are already on their way to help people in Ealing following the closure of a store in Uxbridge Road.

The donations, worth thousands of pounds, weighed in at just over one tonne after they were donated to Ealing Foodbank by Southern Co-op.

Rather than send the remaining stock to another retail store, colleagues donated all five and a half cages to the foodbank which is part of The Trussell Trust, working to combat poverty and hunger across the UK.

Hilary Padmore, Warehouse Manager at Ealing Foodbank, said: "We distribute around 20 tonnes of food a month so this donation will obviously make a difference. Most of it was extremely useful.

"At the moment we are feeding around 3,500 people a month but we are expecting this to increase over the next few months. There is a huge variety of people who we support - single people, families and couples from all sorts of backgrounds.

"Six or seven years ago, the majority of people were unemployed but we have seen a significant shift to households where at least one person is working."

The foodbank, which was founded by local churches, currently relies on donations made by people at collection points in their local shops and supermarkets.

Holly Bramble, Community Lead for Southern Co-op - the independent, regional co-operative, said: "Food banks provide vital support for our local communities so this donation is just one way in which we can say thank you.

"We'd also like to thank all of our customers who continue to donate food via the donation points in our stores to local community food banks. With their help, we currently support more than 60 local community food banks.

"We also now do this via our membership cards as we donate 2p to our local community foodbank partners whenever members buy food, drink or groceries in our stores."

The difficult decision was made to close The Co-operative Food - Ealing on 11 August due to challenging market conditions and a significant decline in performance over the last few years.

To find out more about thecommunity reward scheme and other funding available for local causes,visit www.southern.coop/how-we-do-it/community.