Member Article

Huge uptake in meal replacement bars donation offer

A food manufacturer which created a special meal replacement bar to help people in need during the Covid-19 crisis has donated thousands of them to food banks and other charities.

So far, Sunderland Fairtrade business Tropical Wholefoods has donated more than 4,000 of the bars which it developed to help food banks, soup kitchens and shelters for the homeless to provide nutrition for their clients at a time when stocks of fresh or donated foods may be low.

Each bar provides 15% of an adult’s recommended daily calorie, protein and carbohydrate intake and is created from a range of healthy ingredients. When they created the bars, Tropical Wholefoods said they would, for every box bought, donate a box to an organisation supporting people in need.

Richard Friend of Tropical Wholefoods said: “The response has been great with hundreds of customers from across the UK getting in touch to buy a box so we have been able to donate thousands of bars, which is fantastic. The response has been so good, we are planning to make more and continue to offer them in the same way – for every box bought, we’ll donate a box.

“We would love to have provided all of the bars for free, but we’re a relatively small organisation and we have to cover some of costs of production and distribution.”

Line Manager at Tropical Wholefoods, Neil Calvert, added: “We are in food manufacture so some of us can still come into work which makes the situation slightly more normal, but these are still worrying times for everyone.

“It’s really good for morale that we are also able to do something to help people locally. Everyone knows that these organisations do a great job in supporting people in need and have sometimes been struggling for donations.”

The bars are available for sale on the Tropical Wholefoods website. For every box sold, the organisation will donate one box to a relevant cause.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Neil Shaefer .