Two local grocery stores are starting a fight against hunger Thursday.
The War on Hunger is a new event at both of the city’s Save-On-Foods branches. Designed to benefit the St. Albert Food Bank and Community Village, each store’s battlefield will feature a great big wall … of soup.
“It’s over 4,000 cans of soup,” said James Woodall, assistant store manager at the north location. “It’ll be 17-and-a-half feet long, six feet high and two feet deep and it’ll be there till it’s gone, even if it takes three or four days! We’re going to sell down the hunger wall.”
Shoppers will be encouraged to tear down the wall by purchasing each can until the wall totally disappears.
Every year, Campbell’s Soup Company funds the Stop the Hunger Campaign, said Kim Bedry, the president of the St. Albert Kinettes, the local service group that will be helping out with the event.
She said St. Albert was chosen to be one of the featured sites this year. The Kinettes were asked to participate as partners because of the popularity and success of their annual December Fill-a-Bus campaign, run with the help of St. Albert Transit buses and drivers.
“They asked us if we would come in and bring the buses to come and do a Stuff-a-Bus at both locations.”
She added that the walls will act as the build-up to the bus event.
The group also runs its Christmas hamper campaign and last year collected so much food that it was able to give more than 3,500 kilograms to the food bank after all of the hampers were provided for local families in need.
“We’re just very excited to be helping out the community again in another service project,” Bedry ended.
Along with the two walls, both stores will be having a Stuff-a-Bus event to be held on Saturday, April 13. Those events will also feature barbecue fundraisers with the help of Mayor Nolan Crouse and MP Stephen Khan. All proceeds will go to support the food bank.
The stores are located at 740 St. Albert Trail and 140 St. Albert Trail at Village Landing.
