Gifting grocery bags to Southampton families over Christmas
As part of our #LunchCrowd initiative and our Southampton City Council grant, we have been gifting families attending our clubs, free grocery bags complete with low-cost and low-equipment recipes created by our Chefs. They have been really well received, with great feedback!
"A great big thank you to Coach 4 U Sports and Mansbridge Primary School for the free sports session taking place this week with free lunches provided by City Catering Southampton, who then also gave us this free bag of ingredients and recipe for the lovely meal I have just cooked for us all."
To continue to support families during the Christmas holidays in particular we have to sometimes get a little bit more creative! Often, due to venue or volunteer challenges over the festive period, our activity partners are unable to run - or, like our flagship club with partners Make Lunch in Sholing, they need to host their festive celebrations elsewhere.
Unable to open up the school kitchens to support families this Christmas, we instead gifted grocery bags with a festive twist. This Christmas, the bags were full of fresh fruit and vegetables (thank you to our suppliers Harvest Fine Food for donations) as well as some store-cupboard favourites, herbs, spices and an array of festive recipes. From roasted root recipes, to leftover turkey enchiladas, there was plenty to choose from.
Over three days, we delivered 120 families two bags full of groceries to help them through the school holidays. It was a complete team effort, and a much larger project than we had previously done. Everyone from our wonderful care meals team, our hospitality chefs, our office teams pitched in, together with Rachel, our CEO.
Grocery bags were delivered to two schools and one church, as well as three local Sure Start centres. Supporting the Sure Start centre families was a new way for us to support the local community, following partnership and additional funding as part of the Southampton City Council's Feed the Future campaign.
We are always proud to be able to support local families, but we couldn't do it without the support of funding and sponsorship. To help us continue to do more of the above, please consider supporting our work here.
#FoodForGood