Big Y Shoppers Help Sack Hunger

In a chain-wide effort to help the hungry within their local communities, all Big Y stores have initiated the company’s Sack Hunger program.

The program consists of a large green reusable grocery bag filled with staple non-perishable food items selected by the food banks. Customers purchase a pre-assembled bag for $10 and then Big Y distributes the bags to that region’s local food bank. In turn, the food banks distribute the filled “sacks” to area soup kitchens, food pantries, senior food programs, daycare centers as well as many of their other member agencies. All of the donated sacks will be distributed within the supermarket’s marketing area so every donation stays within the local community. The Sack Hunger Campaign began November 8th and will run through the rest of this year. So far, almost 4000 bags have been sold.

The sacks include the following non-perishable Big Y items: corn flakes, long grain rice, elbow macaroni, kidney beans, peanut butter, cut green beans, sweet peas, whole kernel corn, chunk light tuna, and quick oats. Sacks are available at all Big Y Supermarkets and Fresh Acres. Big Y hopes to provide at least 5000 bags to area food programs by the end of this program.

All five food banks within Big Y’s marketing area are participating in Sack Hunger. These food banks represent over 2,100 member agencies throughout the region. They are the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, The Greater Boston Food Bank, Worcester County Food Bank, Foodshare of Greater Hartford, and The Connecticut Food Bank.

Springfield, Mass.-based Big Y is independently owned and operates 62 stores throughout Connecticut and Massachusetts with over 10,000 employees.