Tesco customers donate 3.6m meals via its 2015 Neighbourhood Food Collection
Howard Lake | 10 July 2015 | News
Customers of Tesco have donated over 3.6 million meals to charity during the supermarket’s sixth Neighbourhood Food Collection this summer. The food will be redistributed to people in need via charity partners FareShare and The Trussell Trust, with Tesco adding an extra 30% to all customer donations.
This year customers donated 13% more than they did in the 2014 collection. The total number of meals donated so far this year, including local collections, surplus food from Tesco’s dotcom distribution centres and Tesco’s 30% top-up, is over 6 million.
Since the Neighbourhood Food Collection began in December 2012 over 27.5 million meals have been donated.
Customers are also donating more food via Tesco stores on a daily basis throughout the year. In the first six months of 2015 over 2.1 million meals worth of food have been donated at permanent collection points that operate in 507 Tesco store. This is almost as much as the whole of 2014 combined.
Volunteers from The Trussell Trust, FareShare, BT and the British Red Cross joined Tesco colleagues in store to collect donations from customers.
The food collected will benefit people living in food poverty, many of whom are parents struggling with food costs due to lack of free school meals over the long summer holiday.
According to research by The Trussell Trust, the number of people helped by foodbanks in the first half of the 2014-15 financial year is 38% higher than numbers helped during the same period last year.
Lindsay Boswell, CEO of FareShare, said:
“Yet again we have been blown away by everyone’s generosity. We are very grateful to Tesco and their colleagues for hosting the event, our amazing volunteers and partner organisations across the country who selflessly gave up their time to help collect food donations to the great British public who responded so generously to the call for action.
“The food will now be redistributed to over 1,923 charities and community projects supported by FareShare, including play schemes supporting children and families over the holidays”.
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Our customers donated an amazing 3.6 million meals during the latest food collection bringing the 2015 total to 6 million! #everycanhelps
— Tesco News (@tesconews) July 10, 2015
A big thank you to everyone who donated in the Neighbourhood Food Collection! #EveryCanHelps http://t.co/fdYeN7DSbG pic.twitter.com/Xmr7vmBN2F
— Tesco News (@tesconews) July 6, 2015
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.