Hannaford launches program to help feed hungry

Hannaford Supermarkets have launched the 2014 edition of Hannaford Helps Fight Hunger, a charitable campaign focused on helping feed people who do not have access to enough nutritious food.

Hannaford Helps Fight Hunger is a partnership between the supermarket and its customers in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York to provide food and money to local pantries and regional food banks. Donations benefit the one in six Americans – 49 million people — who are “food insecure,” without consistent access to all the nutritious food they need.

Hannaford Helps Fight Hunger has three parts:

— Hannaford Helping Hands: Customers purchase a box of food staples for $10, and choose whether to have the box delivered to the local pantry or to donate it personally.  With every box purchased, customers receive a recipe book and more than $25 in coupons. Hannaford customers bought a record 92,752 Helping Hands boxes in 2013, an increase of 15 percent over the previous year;

— Register Donation: Throughout December, customers may donate money to their state food bank, in $5 increments, at the register.  Donors will receive a recipe book;

— Buy One, Give One: For four weeks, starting Nov. 16, customers can trigger Hannaford donations to food banks by purchasing a particular product on specific days. For each item purchased, Hannaford will donate an identical product to the state or regional food bank. Last year, this program generated 30,332 boxes of spaghetti, 30,977 cans of sauce, and 57,095 cans of vegetables for food banks.

Each Hannaford store determines what local food pantries to support. Stores compete with one another to encourage donations, and those supermarkets with the highest level of giving receive additional cash donations from Hannaford to be contributed locally.

Since 2008, Hannaford Helps Fight Hunger has contributed a total of more than $5.5 million in food, customer cash gifts, and Hannaford cash donations from its 187 stores in the Northeast to local food pantries and food banks.

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