Sunday was the final day of shopping at Target’s Kitchener location, but it’s not just shoppers that will be missing out.
When Target moved into Canada they formed a partnership with Food Banks Canada, delivering weekly donations of food to local food banks.
Since their partnership began, the Food Bank of Waterloo Region says it received over 273,000 pounds of food from Target. Most of it was fresh food.
“We had been working with local Target stores since last July, and we were receiving a wide variety of perishable food products including salads, dips, dairy products, desserts. Just a number of items that were going directly to our member agencies every week,” explained Wendi Campbell, executive director of the Food Bank of Waterloo Region.
Target isn’t the only major donor The Food Bank of Waterloo Region has lost recently; Schneiders in Kitchener closed last month. However Campbell isn’t worried about losing those donors.
“We have an annual food procurement plan, so it’s about multiple sources of food coming into the Food Bank, it isn’t dependant on any one particular donor,” she said.
“Target was just one small donor, but we’ve had to replace some of that food by working with other community partners and we’ll continue to do that in the weeks to come,” said Campbell.
“Our plan, as always is to be very nimble and to be able to shift gears when the food industry changes.”
The Food Bank distributes more than three million pounds of food a year.
Campbell says 35,000 people in Waterloo Region depend on emergency food services in some way.
