Free Food

nurse86

Hi all

Every christmas my local church turns our car park into a Bethlehem marketplace with the sights, sounds and smells of a typical Israeli market in the time of Jesus, we have a live nativity and its a wonderful christmas experience, however..as you can imagine this can be quite an expensive fete especially as we dont charge the public any money to visit.

The market stalls need a lot of stock including fruit and veg, bread, fish, herbs and spices and things like nuts and honey etc. The food is not for sale but in order to create authenticity it needs to be fresh (i.e. not rotten!), I was thinking about writing to local supermarkets to ask them if they would be willing to help us out, maybe donating some produce at a reduced price or even better free of charge.

Has anyone got any tips or ideas of what kind of things I would need to put in my letter?

Any suggestions for how to keep costs down would also be appreciated.


Thanks!

pawsies

Quite a few stores have a quota for charities in which they need to fill e.g. donate £1000 to local charities from profits. This will obviously be split between many charities but they should honour something towards your cause if they can

Not sure what to put though- this might help.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5688862_request-food-donations-charities.html

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

What happens to the food afterwards?


Because if anybody expects local businesses to donate food to look pretty at a church do and then be chucked in the bin, when it could be donated to the homeless and hungry, I think they really need to look at the world outside having nice photographs in the local rag.

laurel7172

I'm afraid I think Jojo is right. It sounds more like a social "do" than a strictly charitable one, and you shouldn't be trying to take donations away from organisations that help the genuinely needy. Can't the churchgoers pay for it?

Whiteknight

Plastic food would be much better as you can use it year after year with no waste

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Whiteknight wrote: »

Plastic food would be much better as you can use it year after year with no waste

Or get the toddler group/church creche/childrens section to make salt dough ones. Good activity and not so insulting to the homeless and the poor as wasting food, that some of us could only dream of having, on set dressing.

valk_scot

I think your church would be better off running a soup kitchen with the money they would normally spend on this free show. Yes I'm sure it's nice to look at but what's the point? It would be far more in the spirit of Christmas for the church to feed a few needy people instead tbh.

barbarawright

We can't you sell the food to raise money for the church or local charities?