Two bendy buses donated to a leading food relief organisation have been transformed into mobile supermarkets to help meet the individual needs of communities in Victoria.
With demand for food relief in Australia at an all-time high owing to ever-increasing costs of living, Foodbank Victoria wants to ensure the groceries and pantry staples it supplies to charities for distribution are appropriate in terms of culture, faith and geography.
“The days of giving everyone pasta and pasta sauce or rice and spam are over; it doesn't work for a lot of communities,” spokesman Matt Tilley said.
“Many can't eat those foods for religious or cultural reasons.
“We've decided we can't just be a response anymore and do the best we can.”
Instead, Foodbank Victoria is carrying out in-depth studies of all 79 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Victoria to determine what communities need specifically.
“We’re saying: ‘Right, what have you got? What do you need? What's missing? How can we plug any gaps and lift people back up on their feet?” Mr Tilley said.
“We're driven by dignity and respect.”
The buses, furloughed by Kinetic Melbourne during the height of Covid, have been transformed into “one long supermarket aisle” with fridge and freezer items and shelves of pantry staples.
Foodbank Victoria gained valuable insight by observing the response of some charities during the pandemic.
“When nine tower blocks of public housing were shut down in Melbourne, people rushed to help, leaving stews and casseroles in Cryovac bags at people's doors,” Mr Tilley said.
“However, the towers housed a large contingent of people from African communities who weren’t familiar with these kinds of dishes.
“With our two mobile supermarket buses, if we're going to an area where the local charities tell us there's a large contingent of people from, say, African communities, we’ll fill them up with pulses and products and vegetables more familiar to them.
“During Covid, we set up a pop-up store in the city for international students who were stranded in Australia.
“That was the first time we really stepped into being our own charity or ‘shop’ where we met people who rely on food relief.
“There were a lot of people from South East Asia, so we supplied products like noodles, fresh bok choy and Chinese broccoli, things like that.
“It’s about finding foods that are familiar to specific cultures.”
All 79 LGAs will have their own food plan.
“Finding out what is needed beforehand, rather than reacting to a natural disaster or this cost-of-living crisis and saying: ‘What do we do now?’ is quite a new approach for a charity,” Mr Tilley said.
“It’s called customer service in the commercial world. Some people might read this and think: ‘Beggars can't be choosers; surely they should be grateful for whatever they get’ but that's not the world we live in now.
“Cultural diversity is a big factor these days.”
In terms of food relief, the impact of the cost-of-living crisis far surpasses the effects of Covid.
“The whole world probably thought everything would go back to normal after Covid, but it hasn't,” Mr Tilley said.
“Since inflation started soaring last year, demand for our services is 43 per cent higher than it was pre-Covid. We’ve more than doubled our staff in that time.
“For a lot of people, it was the final straw. They then get trapped in a cycle of only ever being two or three pay packets away from everything falling over.
“Once you're in that space, it's very difficult to scramble back up again.”
The cost-of-living crisis is also affecting charities themselves.
Foodbank Victoria went from purchasing $50,000 a year of top-up food (to what gets donated) to $5million in the past three years.
"Although we get fantastic support from the community and business, demand has grown so fast that donations aren’t enough,” Mr Tilley said.
“When the CPI goes up and the price of fruit and veg goes up in the supermarket, not only does that bring more people to our door, but it's harder for us to source fresh foods.
“For this reason, we'll support growers and pay them for food they won’t be able to sell because the supermarkets won't take it.
“So that they can continue to earn a living, we'll buy the crooked carrots and the wonky potatoes, otherwise they end up becoming clients of ours, as well.”
A national organisation, Foodbank has centres across the country.
The Victorian branch, established 90 years ago during the Great Depression, is the oldest.
“We’re like the fridge and pantry for the whole charity sector; there are 480 charities (in Victoria) who treat us like a Costco,” Mr Tilley said.
“So, when the food comes in — donated food along with bulk supplies — it all goes online so the charities can see what we've got.
“They put their order in and if they're local, we pack it up for collection or if it's across the state, we truck it to them.”
Foodbank Victoria is currently feeding 100,000 people every two days and raises about $15million a year to keep two large warehouses stocked and to enable goods to be packed and delivered.
“We start from scratch every year to fund ourselves,” Mr Tilley said.
“We fundraise, we apply for philanthropic grants and occasionally there are government grants. We purchase six months in advance, buying large-scale quantities of rice and basic staples.”
To best support Foodbank, financial donations are most valuable.
“For every dollar donated, that's two meals created,” Mr Tilley said.
“Of course, we never shut the doors on donated goods but for what people spend at the supermarket, we could get five times as much food.
“We can buy goods at scale. We’re so practised at what we do that we get much better value than anyone else would.”
To make a donation, please click here.
Foodbank Victoria has been a member of Ai Group since 2015.
“Although we’ve been around for 90 years, Foodbank has never experienced such a supercharged period of growth as the past three years. Bushfires, pandemics, floods and a cost-of-living crisis have seen our workforce double in this time. For a charity, being able to call upon the expertise of Ai Group when dealing with workplace challenges that often changed on a daily basis (think Covid restrictions in Victoria!) literally kept our warehouse going.” — Matt Tilley, Chief Communications Officer, Foodbank Victoria
Wendy Larter is Communications Manager at the Australian Industry Group. She has more than 20 years’ experience as a reporter, features writer, contributor and sub-editor for newspapers and magazines including The Courier-Mail in Brisbane and Metro, the News of the World, The Times and Elle in the UK.
