Supermarket helps customers to feed the needy

Thousands of meals were provided to people in need this Christmas thanks to customer donations at Tesco in Uddingston.

Across the UK, a total of three million meals worth of food were donated to charities Fareshare and The Trussell Trust as a result of the food collection that ran in Tesco stores before Christmas.

Supermarket shoppers were asked to donate longlife items to help people in need as part of their usual shop, with Tesco topping up the value of the customer donations by 20 per cent.

The kindness brings the overall total donated by Tesco shoppers since the food collection scheme began in 2012 to more than 49 million meals.

In Uddingston, a total of 2629 meals were donated by generous customers at the Tesco store.

The two food charities, Fareshare and The Trussell Trust, see an increase in the need for donations at this time of year.

Lindsay Boswell, CEO at Fareshare, thanked Tesco customers for their generosity, saying: “The food donated at the Tesco Food Collection will make a tremendous difference to the thousands of charities and community groups that Fareshare supports.”

He added: “These groups are doing amazing work with some of the most vulnerable people in our community.

“Thanks to the generosity of Tesco shoppers over the festive season, we have enough long-life food to provide more than 900,000 meals.

“We’d like to thank everyone who donated, as well as all the volunteers who made the store collections such a success.”

Samantha Stapley, operations manager at The Trussell Trust said: “Our foodbank network has spent the last month making sure that people referred to them with no money for food don’t go hungry this Christmas.

“This work has been made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of Tesco customers, store colleagues and volunteers during the Food Collection.

“Thank you for your support – your generosity has stopped hunger this Christmas.”