Partnerships, innovation, efficiency fill food services gaps in Regina | Regina Leader Post

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Partnerships, innovation, efficiency filling gaps for food services in Regina Back to video

The food bank is currently distributing about 10,000 to 12,000 pounds of food on a daily basis, about double the amount it had been distributing pre-COVID-19 pandemic, according to its CEO.

“Our spending power is not as negatively affected by inflation as the general public is, who are buying things from retail which is another reason why the monetary donations are able to stretch,” food bank CEO John Bailey said.

Pointing to a bag of organic lentils in his office, Bailey said the partnerships — with companies like Viterra, Avena or AGT Foods — mean they can buy the food at a more favourable rate, rather than the mark up usually seen in retail.

“That bag of lentils cost us less than a dollar for the bag and that at retail, that would be a $10 or $11 bag of lentils,” Bailey said. “When we partner with wholesalers … we get exponentially more bang for our buck than you can at the grocery store.”

The food bank sees an uptick in donations and demand for service during certain parts of the year, such as around the holidays, but that seasonal variance has dissipated in recent years and a consistently high demand has taken its place.

“The past couple of years, including heading into this summer, those numbers are not declining. They’re staying up 12 months a year,” said Bailey. “It’s just sort of steady and rising the whole time.”

Since the start of the pandemic, the food bank has reinforced that the most valuable donation for the bank is cash because of its efficiency. Volunteers spend less time on duties like sorting food by packaging, dates or product type instead of simply purchasing food.

“What we’ve seen over the course of the pandemic is more dollars being donated than pounds of food,” Bailey said. “For us, that’s beneficial because it means because we can actually buy the stuff we want, when we need it, to make sure our hampers are fully rounded out with the healthy, nutritious, vibrant food we want to get out to folks in the community.”

A family of four is forecasted to spend about $1,000 more on food in Canada than they did in 2021.

“For the most part, things have been pretty steady,” said Matt Leisle, executive director of REACH, which charges for the food distributed on a cost-recovery model. The organization is looking at cost efficiencies in areas like vendors or substituting more affordable items into the food boxes.

“On our end, we’re affected by the rising prices too so it’s just maybe put a bit of pressure on us to see how we can reconfigure things and how we can kind of keep our prices as low as we can for everybody,” Leisle said.