Published September 13th, 2022
Appleby Westward, which owns or manages all SPAR stores in the South West, has announced its successful Community Cashback recipients, who have been recognised for their exceptional contributions to their local communities.
One of the recipients is St Michael’s Community Café, a food bank in Salisbury, which received a grant of £2,000.
St Michael’s Community Café runs a community fridge and larder to ensure local people do not go hungry and have access to cleaning products and sanitary items whenever they need them. It also serves discounted meals and drinks to those in need from its popular on-site café.
Part of the community centre at St Michael’s Church, the food bank operates a ‘take-what-you-need’ policy, meaning users do not need traditional food vouchers to access donations and are trusted to take only the products they need, ensuring there is enough for everyone.
Currently run solely by volunteers, the community café will use the grant to install an industrial dishwasher in its kitchen and upgrade other essential facilities.
Laurence Newton, community centre manager at St Michael’s, said: “As we do not receive any funding from the government or the diocese, we have to generate all funds ourselves. This means it can take a long time to get anything done and we always have a long list of things that need fixing or updating.
“We are delighted to have received the grant from SPAR as it takes us one step forward and will make it easier for our volunteers to run the centre, especially as we are predicting a rise in users in the coming months.”
According to the Trussell Trust, South West food banks supplied almost 175,000 emergency food parcels last year. Food bank usage has increased by 81% in the last five years and it is thought that these figures will continue to rise due to the current cost of living crisis.
Nick Vivian, head of marketing at Appleby Westward, said: “Food banks are becoming more and more crucial to the South West community, therefore we felt St Michael’s was an obvious choice to receive this grant. We liked that the dedicated volunteers run a café as well as a community fridge and larder, showing that they go the extra mile.
“SPAR has supported food banks for a number of years by collecting donations in its stores, but we know there are large financial costs involved in running them, especially with energy bills continuing to rise, so we thought a monetary donation would be highly appreciated.”
St Michael’s Community Café is open Monday to Friday, 9:30 to 14:30 for users and donations. It is hoping to extend its opening hours once more volunteers have been recruited.
The Community Cashback scheme is part of SPAR’s greater efforts to bring its customers together. For more information on this, and other ‘Nurture Our Neighbours’ initiatives, visit: https://www.spar.co.uk/community.
