New community shop opens - offering healthy food at a low-price - NW Evening Mail

A NEW community shop which aims to reduce food waste and promote healthy living has opened its doors.

The ‘Well Fed Community Grocers’, on Dalton Road in Barrow, will be open Monday to Saturdays.

Food including fresh fruit and vegetables will be provided by supermarkets and wholesalers from surplus stock.

All the money made will be pumped back into the store and projects by The Well, which works with addicts.

Ged Pickersgill, project manager at The Well, said: “We identified there are a lot of people who require support and we feel that sense of community can be created through a retail outlet.

“It reduces food waste and it provides a sense of community. It is a sort of supermarket, but it is also a charity shop with a different model.

“We just feel that this will create a massive sense of community in Barrow.

"What this is is a method of identifying people who are lonely and those have food poverty.

“It is kind of morphing into a more of a wellbeing hub as opposed to being historically branded as specialist substance misuse, but that does not mean we can’t help other people.

“We have covered 1,000 miles this week to get stock all over Liverpool, Manchester, Bury, Blackburn, and we are going to Leeds next week.

“It is all over the television that people should get talking, but television won’t get people talking, carrots will get people talking.”

The not-for-profit shop will have different stock in fresh everyday.

The new community shop was first announced in 2018 as a means to offer hundreds of low income families access to healthy food at a discounted price.

Christina Timms from Blake Street, said: “I’d definitely come back, it’s a good project for the community.

“I thought it would be limited to those on low income, but it’s for everyone, and I was surprised at the quality of the goods on offer. I really hope it’s a success.”

Lee Atkinson, a volunteer from Kendal, said: “It is really special as there is nowhere else in Barrow that does this.”

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