While it may be rapidly approaching Christmas, the Pelham location of Food Basics had some Thanksgiving leftovers to deal with. It wasn’t the remnants of the turkey or stuffing – or Grandma’s Jell-O salad for that matter.
Rather, said store manager Jeff Millejours, the leftovers in question came in the form of cash and gift cards totalling $5,496 that were to be donated to Pelham Cares. The money and cards were raised in time for Thanksgiving back in October, when customers were asked if the wanted to add a monetary donation to Pelham Cares as a part of their grocery purchase.
And when Millejours met with Pelham Cares Executive Director Gayle Sears to share the proceeds of the campaign it shows the tangible results of how much that $2, $5 or $10 donation can add up.
“Our staff sees it, and the general public sees it,” Millejours said. “That $5 that I donated at Thanksgiving, they're giving it. I see proof.”
The donations collected for the campaign totaled $4,724 from customers that was later supplemented by $745 in gift cards from Metro, Food Basics’ parent company, as part of $100,000 set aside to help charities annually. It’s something the corporation began to do a few years ago, Millejours said.
“It's really gained a lot of momentum. All the feedback is positive,” he said. “You see that pot of the $100,000 that they're dividing up, and you're getting your little piece, and it's like, that's great. You actually see it.”
For Sears, donations like this from Food Basics are helpful.
“It's phenomenal for us,” she said. “We want to sustain families throughout the year, but of course, the holiday times are special times where it's very hard for families to make those occasions special without the extras.”
Pelham Cares, she added, helps make those occasions a little brighter with hampers provided to help clients at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter.
“These donations help us to do that.”
Millejours, meanwhile, said staff relish the opportunity to help the store give a little something back to the community.
“The employees have gotten behind that,” he said.
The fundraising surrounding holidays is not all the store does. If often donates excess food items through Metro’s One More Bite Program.
“We donate some meat or donate some baked goods. We donate some dairy products, things that people can still use,” he said.
“We get a lot of meat that's going to go out of date,” Sears said. “And we even put it in our big freezers. We stopped the date so, like, our clients got way more meat than they would have.”
In fact, she said the food donations mean Pelham Cares clients have access to more food.
“I would say that allows us to give close to 25 per cent more food items to our clients than we would have given otherwise.”
