With increasing demand for food banks, one of several are using a more familiar model; rather than preparing it in just a bag or a box, they are putting it on their shelf ready for the customers to pick up what’s needed from their shopping list.
Executive Director of the Campus food bank Erin O’neil, says this method helps the food bank a lot.
“We’re actually giving out less food per household, on average we’re giving out a lot more food than a couple of years ago, but each household is taking home less because they’re only taking home food that they want,” said O’neil.
The University of Alberta’s food bank Food Bank has been using the grocery model since 2022, since then, they have received an average of 1100 clients per month compared to less than 800 per month they received when following the hamper model.
“Rather than our limited volunteer pool, having a construct more and more hampers in a small space, we can just have the volunteers fill up the shelves and then see more clients in a day,” said O’neil.
At the University of Alberta’s food bank, customers pick their food like they would at a grocery store.
It’s different though at the much larger Edmonton’s food bank, where customers are given a hamper with food choices already made.
Edmonton’s food bank accommodated about 47 thousand clients just this October, doubled from last year, and completely switching to a full grocery model.
The Food Bank says it is not feasible for a large organization.
Adding that volunteers need to be active over 5000 hours per month non-stop.
“By the time we help people with some wrap-around services and shop, we can only serve eight families an hour, we’re serving 47,000 people each month so it would be impossible for us to get that number of people through a pantry program,” said Marjorie Bencz Executive Director, Edmonton’s food bank.
Despite the disadvantages, Edmonton’s food bank still opened their own grocery model program in April as part of their option to their clients.
“We do a lot of work to try to find other options for people because using the food bank on a regular basis is not really sustainable for us as an organization and over time, it’s not really helpful for people,” said Bencz.