Volunteers always needed for the ‘Pret run’
Since 2014, Happy City has collected sandwiches and salads for homeless people from Pret a Manger on Clifton Triangle. Pret only sells food that’s made fresh on the premises each day, so anything left over at closing time has to be binned. Fortunately, they hate waste, so there’s a company-wide policy that leftover food should be distributed to the homeless wherever possible. That’s where we come in.
Happy City helps out on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday every week between 6 and 6.20pm(5pm Sundays). We have to be reliable, and we have to get there no later than 20 minutes after closing time or they’ll be bagging the food for the bins. We then take the food to the Foyer just by Bristol Bridge (open all the time) which provides emergency or short term housing for young people in need.
To do this, we need a fairly continuous supply of volunteers to guarantee the pickups – the more of us there are, the less of a big commitment it is for all of us. We self-organise a rota using an on-line calendar – mail info@happycity.org.uk and we’ll share the link so you can simply open it up and add your name on the day(s) you can manage.
Happy City has an agreement with Pret head office that we can keep a few sandwiches for Happy City volunteers too, so there’s a second drop with the last handful (4-8 sandwiches/salads or so) just 200 yards further along Victoria Street (1st floor, 38 Canningford House). We usually use one of those granny style shopping trolleys. Some volunteers use panniers – the amount of food varies from regular carrier bag amount, to (very occasionally) two large bin liners full. If there’s a large amount like that, we take whatever the volunteer can manage. The person doing the run can help themselves to one or two sandwiches as well for having made it possible.
The staff at Pret hate to have to throw away good food if we can’t collect, so please help us fill up our rota so we can do good reliably… It’s a win, win, win all round
Hope you can help
Thank You on behalf of the homeless, Pret and Happy City if you can!
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