Festival Foods celebrates Family Meals Month
EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (WEAU) - All September long Festival Foods is raising a paw and taking a stand against local hunger for four-legged friends and families in need.
In drawing awareness to Family Meals Month, Festival Foods encourages families to enjoy meals together and help others achieve family meals as well, they’re offering a number of programs insights and recipe ideas to pay it forward.
To accomplish those family meals, the Badger State grocery store is highlighting its Food for Neighbors Program as well as Paw Away Hunger.
The two programs that collects donations both in store and online to provide food and supplies to about 40 food pantries and 30 animal shelters across the state, including Eau Claire.
“The food pantry can take those dollars, that money and go to our stores and buy supplies at cost,” says Lauren Tulig, registered dietitian and nutritionist with Festival. “What we’ve heard in communicating with a lot of our different partners and food pantries is that that’s helpful because a lot of times when it comes to food donations, they kind of get the same thing...it’s canned goods, packaged foods, and things like that but when they get dollars to spend directly at the grocery store, they can kind of fill in those gaps and buy what they need and what their families need.”
Community members are welcome to support these programs year-round but during September’s Family Meals Month, Tulig says they really try and advocate the message of giving back to those in need.
“This year we recognize things are a little better but we recognize the need in that new families in our communities were still struggling in terms of food insecurity and just getting food on the table for their families,” says Tulig.
As part of their efforts, Tulig along with several other Festival Foods nutritionists are hosting free live virtual cooking classes throughout the month featuring easy, tasty family meals. After attending each of the live classes and completing a survey, participants will be entered to win a $100 Festival Foods gift card.
“I think we’re all kind of in that boat in September we’re like okay its busier now, kids are back in school, we’re trying to get a meal on the table, we’re kind of out of ideas, we’ve made all the same things throughout the summer, so we’re just trying to help families come up with some new recipe ideas that are really simple can be made in about 20 minutes,” Tulig says.
Festival Foods is selling $5 and $10 donation cards at their front-end cashier registers. You may provide your cards to the cashier and your donation will be added to your grocery total.
All of your proceeds will help an animal organization or food pantry within the community.
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