Project SHARE still winner after egg contest loss
Denny’s restaurant owner steps up with pledge of 14,400 eggs for food bank
Sometimes when you lose, you actually win.
Take for instance, the failed bid by Project Share of Niagara Falls in the Beat Hunger contest sponsored by the Egg Farmers of Ontario in the fall.
The local charity, which operates a food bank where demand continues to soar, reached out to the community to ask for votes in the contest that saw food banks compete against each other for the most votes online. At stake was a first-place award of 600 dozen eggs, second place was for 400 dozen eggs and third place was for 250 dozen eggs, for a total of 1,250 dozen eggs.
The local charity was edged out, finishing fourth, meaning no eggs for it.
That didn’t sit well with Eric Marcon, president of the Howard Johnson Hotel by the Falls and the Denny’s restaurant inside the Victoria Avenue hotel.
“I saw the results, and I felt a little bad,” Marcon, who placed a vote himself in support of the local charity, said in an interview Thursday at the Denny’s location. “I said the community has to come together, so I stepped up.”
His Denny’s restaurant, which offers breakfast 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, goes through a whopping 300,000 eggs a year, supplied by Christie’s Dairy.
“Our primary purchase is eggs, so it made good sense to fill in the void,” said Marcon.
But he wasn’t going to settle with simply matching the contest’s first-place award of a one-time, prize of 600 dozen eggs.
“I said, ‘We’re going to show these other towns how we do things in Niagara Falls, on a larger scale,’” said Marcon. “So we doubled it.”
Marcon is donating 200 dozen eggs a month — 2,400 eggs — for six months. That’s 14,400 eggs in total.
Pam Sharp, director of community engagement for Project SHARE, said eggs are a healthy food source that her agency doesn’t always have stocked in the refrigeration unit in its food room.
“It’s a harder item for people to donate: you can’t put eggs in one of our Project SHARE collection barrels in the community,” she said. “It’s not something we often have, so it’s a very welcome thing. It’s a very valuable item.”
Sharp said many people associate the food bank with only non-perishable items such as canned goods and pasta, but the agency very much welcomes fresh and frozen food.
“We do accept fresh food and eggs, and this year we’re starting to see frozen turkeys” donated, she said. “The most popular and requested things in our food room is fresh food. It’s really important to us.”
Fresh food is an important component of meeting Canada’s healthy food guide, said Sharp.
“We believe everybody should have access to fresh food and healthy food, so it’s really important for us to be able to offer those things,” she said. “We’re really grateful for the opportunity.”
Sharp said it’s almost a luxury to be able to offer eggs.
“Our clients are very grateful for that.” Marcon said it’s “sad” that eggs have become a luxury for many people.
“We take things for granted,” he said. He figures the egg donation is one way his business can help change that for some people.
“It’s giving back to the community,” he said. The first delivery of eggs was made to the food bank on Tuesday.