Sainsbury’s has this week launched dedicated shelf-edge labels to alert its customers to items most useful for food banks.
Starting this Friday, customers across more than 1,400 Sainsbury’s branches will urged to add priority items in their shop, for donation after checkout.
These include tinned fish, meat and vegetables, pasta, instant coffee, longlife fruit juice and UHT milk as the grocer looks to improve its food collection scheme by encouraging more suitable and long-lasting donations.
Named “Help Brighten a Million Christmases”, the campaign will also be introduced in Argos, with the aim of getting one million food and toy donations across the UK over Christmas.
A group of teenagers that are part of the National Citizen Service pitched the idea whilst working on a social project, seeing that customers only noticed food bank donation baskets when they had finished their shopping.
A trial at Sainsbury’s led to a three-fold rise in donations.
Sainsbury’s has now teamed up with hundreds of charity partners across the UK including the Trussell Trust, the Salvation Army and the Felix Project, ready to distribute the food items to local communities in the run up to Christmas.
“We couldn’t be more proud of this group of young people for the impact they’ve already made in their local community, and the even bigger impact their idea is set to have across the country,” said NCS chief executive Michael Lynas.
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