Imagine walking into a store, picking out all your groceries for the week and not having to worry about facing an expensive bill at the checkout.
For clients of the Regina Food Bank, that will soon be a reality.
Since the pandemic, there has been a spike in food bank users across the country, up 25 per cent in Regina alone. One in eight families — and one in four children — are now food insecure in the city. Of the 16,000 monthly clients, 44 per cent are kids.
The new Regina Food Bank Community Food Hub, modelled after a traditional grocery store, is set to open this summer in the former government liquor store location downtown.
Besides what’s already been said, even if there is food waste from things left on the shelves, at least this allows us to know that certain items are undesirable for everyone and to avoid acquiring more of them. If you hand out a bit to everyone and they all end up in different trash bins, you’ll never know about it and you’ll never fix the problem.
Yeah that’s probably the strongest point in favour of letting people pick what they want. But I guess a potential downside of that could be if people start stocking up mostly on only a few select items that everyone else also wants., leaving nothing behind for them. But I guess that’s mitigated by seeing that happen a few times then specifically trying to get even more of those select items going forward.