By TORY DENIS
[email protected]
CLAREMONT — Hannaford Supermarket in has donated $4,250 worth of food to help local families in need last week as part of a regional campaign to fight hunger.
Hannaford, a New England grocery chain, also donated 39,622 pounds of food last week, valued at $36,500, to the New Hampshire Food Bank through the 2017 giving campaign.
Shoppers at the Washington Street store helped their New Hampshire friends and neighbors by purchasing 425 Fight Hunger Boxes at $10 each.
“I just think that it’s one of the things we pride ourselves in at Hannaford — being part of the community we live in,” said Claremont store manager Chad Myhre on Thursday.
The Fight Hunger Campaign keeps donations local. Each box represents $10 worth of locally donated food, and includes rice, canned fruits, pasta, canned vegetables, peanut butter and cereal. The store also collected donations at the register as part of the hunger campaign.
The program directly benefits residents of Claremont because the supermarket chain works closely with the Claremont Soup Kitchen to help distribute food to local residents, according to Eric Blom, a spokesperson for the company.
The store also participates in “food rescue,” he said. When food in the store is approaching its freshness date or has cosmetic damage to packaging, it is donated on a regular basis to the soup kitchen, which helps feed residents in need.
This gift brings the total value of food and cash donations made statewide through the 2017 Hannaford Helps Fight Hunger holiday campaign to pantries and the New Hampshire Food Bank to $282,000, according to a press release from New Hampshire Food Bank, a program of Catholic Charities New Hampshire.
“We are truly grateful for this continued support and partnership with Hannaford Supermarkets,” said Eileen Liponis, executive director of the New Hampshire Food Bank.
“This donation will help ease the burden for many families in New Hampshire. This is a difficult time of year for many of the people we serve making the timing of this donation particularly impactful.”
In addition to the New Hampshire effort, the Hannaford Helps Fight Hunger program spans the other four states in Hannaford’s market area: Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts and New York. The regional effort generated a total of $1.1 million dollars in nutritious food and cash for food banks and pantries across the Northeast.
The final installment of these donations – delivered by tractor-trailer to food banks in the five states served by Hannaford – comes at a time of year when food donations typically slow down, according to organizers. Hannaford Helps Fight Hunger, a campaign held annually during the holiday season, has raised $10.1 million for those in need since the program began in 2008.
“Once again, customers showed their generosity through the Hannaford Helps Fight Hunger program, helping people who otherwise might not have enough nutritious food to eat,” said Eric Blom, Hannaford spokesman. “These donations provide the equivalent of 4.4 million meals for people in our community and demonstrate what a difference we can make in individuals’ lives when we work together.”
The Hannaford Helps Fight Hunger campaign had three parts: The Fight Hunger Boxes, which customers could decide whether to have delivered to the local pantry or to donate personally; Register Donation, where customers donate money to their local food pantry, right at the register;
And the Buy One, Give One, in which Hannaford donated specific products identical to those items purchased by customers during a four-week period.
The recent truckloads of donated items were delivered through the Buy One, Give One donations included more than 105,000 boxes, cans and jars of pasta, beans, peas, corn, oat cereal and peanut butter. Earlier, the program donated more than 95,000 large boxes filled with food staples such as rice, canned fruit and vegetables, pasta, cereal and peanut butter, as well as thousands of dollars in cash donations.
The annual campaign builds off the work local Hannaford stores and distribution centers participate in each day. In 2017, Hannaford donated nearly 24 million pounds of food rescued from its stores – items that were approaching their sell-by date or had cosmetic damage.
During 2017, the New Hampshire Food Bank distributed 13.7 million pounds of food to its partners statewide.
This year, due to the growing demand, the New Hampshire Food Bank expects to distribute more than 14 million pounds of food.
Hannaford Supermarkets, based in Scarborough, Maine, operates 181 stores in the Northeast. Hannaford employs more than 27,000 associates. For more information on Hannaford, visit www.hannaford.com.
The New Hampshire Food Bank has been working to relieve hunger in the Granite State since 1984. The New Hampshire Food Bank receives no federal or state funding for food distribution. In 2017, as the state’s only Food Bank, the New Hampshire Food Bank efficiently procured and distributed 13.7 million pounds of food to people in need through more than 425 nonprofit registered agencies.
Agencies include food pantries, neighborhood centers, low-income housing sites, senior nutrition centers, family crisis centers, hospices, soup kitchens, emergency shelters, after school programs, and day care centers, including those in Sullivan County.
For more information about the New Hampshire Food Bank, visit www.nhfoodbank.org.
As your daily newspaper, we are committed to providing you with important local news coverage for Sullivan County and the surrounding areas.