FOODBANKS in the West Midlands have received thousands of items of food to help meet the demand thanks to an emergency support scheme from Tesco.
Working in partnership with the Trussell Trust, Tesco has supported the 29 food banks across the UK most in need of food donations providing more than 730,000 meals.
Between April 2022 and March 2023, food banks across the Trussell Trust network have distributed almost three million emergency food parcels to people who cannot afford the essentials, with 278,230 of the parcels being provided in the West Midlands.
With foodbanks struggling to keep up, Tesco stepped in to ensure that they could secure the items they needed to provide support to people in their area.
The foodbanks were able to order food directly at no cost and have that fulfilled by Tesco’s distribution network – meaning they received weekly deliveries of vital items for food parcels, ensuring they could meet the need in their local community.
Ruth Allsopp, operations coordinator at Worcester Foodbank, said: “We want to say a massive thank you to Tesco for their additional support with bulk food donations.
“We have seen demand grow consistently between 25-40% over the past 12 months.
“As a result, an increasing amount of our time has been spent on sourcing, ordering, and collecting food items – spending thousands of pounds each week on additional stock.
“The support from Tesco has saved us precious time and money and helped to ensure that those visiting Worcester Foodbank are consistently receiving full, varied, and nutritionally balanced parcels of food.”
Andrew Woolfenden, UK distribution and fulfilment director at Tesco, said: “When the Trussell Trust told us it had food banks struggling to meet demand we wanted to find a way we could help them quickly and easily.
“We have a great partnership with the Trussell Trust through our stores and this was a chance for our distribution colleagues to be involved in helping communities.
“They are brilliant at planning the logistics to make these donations easy for food banks so they could receive exactly what they needed most free of charge from Tesco.”
