The Food Rescue Store in Brandon has attracted the attention of grocery shoppers in the Westman Region, including Food Banks.

Petchie Hawkins is the Operations Manager and a board member with the Killarney Food Bank.  With their new walk-in cooler, Hawkins says the Rescue Food Store will be a great resource for them to help fill their shelves.

Ted Dzogan opened up the downtown Brandon store in December of 2021 and has seen very strong support from his community.

"He's rescued a lot of food items, such as yoghurt," explains Hawkins.  "There's nothing wrong with it and it's not outdated. It just gets to the grocery store and if it doesn't get there on time they refuse it because they've got another truck coming 2 days later, and they don't have storage for it."

"So, he's all about rescuing food like that, and we'll be able to access that.  We have never been able to access that before because we just didn't have the refrigerator space for it.  Ted is going to come to our next meeting and do a bit of presentation for the rest of the board.  I talked to him on the phone, he's doing lots of really wonderful things with food waste, and making sure that doesn't happen."

"Then there is also the people who don't necessarily need to use the food bank but having a cut in cost to their groceries, it keeps them from having to go to a food bank, right?  The Food Rescue Store in Brandon, the cost of groceries I think is something like 30% of what the normal cost would be.  So, that's helping families to not have to access food banks and to leave the food banks for people who really, really need it badly," she adds.