SUPERMARKETS and their hard-working staff have played a pivotal role during the pandemic – ensuring customers can shop safely while ramping up home delivery operations.
The Herald has carried several articles hinting at these efforts – from allowing volunteers to skip queues, to setting aside basic essentials for NHS workers, donating food and even Easter eggs to groups supporting the most vulnerable, and its ongoing financial support of charities.
But these tell only half the story, and the national retailers’ Farnham, Alton and Haslemere stores have all played their part, much of it behind the scenes.
To take the Farnham store as an example, Waitrose Community Matters champion Alice Butcher has played a key role in the weekly Farnham and Villages Coronavirus Support Helpline catch-ups on Zoom.
Through this she has provided advice and support for shopping volunteers where possible, and helped the town’s community groups and charities access financial aid from Waitrose, and various support funds set up by its parent company John Lewis.
The store has also worked with the police and South West Surrey Domestic Abuse Outreach Service to support victims of domestic abuse, for whom a trip to the shops may offer one of the few opportunities to escape their abusers, and is now teaming up with care agency Right at Home GF to raise awareness of the difficulties people with dementia face adhering to ever-shifting social distancing guidelines.
Although customers cannot currently vote for their favourite charity to receive a share of £1,000 each month through the green token scheme, Waitrose has continued to give out £333 to three good causes each month – with an emphasis on supporting those on the front line of the Covid-19 fightback.
In addition, at the outset of the pandemic, John Lewis allocated an extra £1 million pot of funding for branches to distribute to causes within their communities.
Each store was given £3,000, with the Farnham store helping feed key workers’ children at Weydon School, partnering with a chef cooking meals for NHS staff at Frimley Park Hospital, and providing lunches for the staff at Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice – to name just a few.
Easter eggs have also been donated to the Woodlarks Centre, Farnham food bank, Waverley Home-Start and the Brightwells Gostrey Centre.
The branch has been working closely with the UK’s largest food redistribution charity FareShare, supplying food nearing its sell-by date to groups including Brightwells Gostrey Centre and Woodlarks in Farnham, and the Vine Centre in Aldershot. And it has even begun donating some of its more perishable items to the animals at Miller’s Ark Farm.
If that wasn’t enough, Waitrose head office found an additional pot of £500,000 to support charities or organisations working through the pandemic, inviting each branch to bid for grants of up to £5,000. And of course Alice put in a number of bids on behalf of local groups, bagging a £2,000 grant for Disability Challengers and £1,000 for Farnham ASSIST.
In the latter case, this money has enabled ASSIST to take out personal liability insurance, enabling its volunteers to carry on their vital work for another six months. And partners at the Farnham branch also nominated to support Challengers with their own fundraising – to date raising an extra £600 for the Farnham-based charity.