“Food bank is all about food. We bring food in. We give food out.”
So what happens when you run out of food?
Cass Francis talked with Ben Fryer on BBC Essex radio today (18/4/2023) about why Southend Foodbank urgently needs donations. Following our busiest month ever in March 2023, we’re now facing increasing numbers of people needing to use the foodbank while we have less than a week’s stock on our shelves for most of the food we pack into three-day parcels.
Cass explains:
We are buying food every week just to keep up with those boxes going out the door. Just keep buying the food, sending the food out, buying more food, sending more food out. It’s completely unsustainable. We are running out of items every week. If we didn’t do any shopping we would run out in a week. So that’s what’s stopping us from having completely empty shelves: the shopping that we’re doing.
The problem is we don’t have £10,000 a month to spend on food going forward. We are going to need to get more donations in. We are going to need to get more monetary donations in, more food in. We are really going to have to work our little socks off to try and get as much food coming in.
“Surprising… and shocking in equal measure”
BBC Essex radio featured the interview on the morning show and on the BBC Sounds website, and covered our story across the day on its hourly news bulletins.
Southend’s Foodbank says it’s running out of food. Last month it fed just under 2,000 people, which it says was its busiest month in its 10-year history. A recent stock take showed it has less than a week’s stock for most of its food. BBC Essex speaks to Cass Francis from Southend Foodbank.
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