Could your church join our mission to help keep families fed across the UK?
Community Groceries are designed to help churches offer practical support in the most deprived neighbourhoods of the UK. With a growing network of almost +40 locations, we’re looking for churches to partner with to open new groceries where they’re needed most.
Ask yourself the questions below to check if a Grocery could be right for your church and community.
If you answer ‘yes’ to each, fill in the Enquiry form underneath.
Our team will be in touch for a no-commitment chat about the opportunities groceries offer, the support we provide and the responsibilities of a partner church.
Once the project is approved, we fit out the shop, help you recruit a store manager and bring in stock.
Our in-house trainer inducts your store manager and our Communications Team provide launch content across web and social media channels. You assemble a team of volunteers and look forward to launch day!
Is a Grocery right for your church?
As well as discerning if this is what God is calling your church to, these are the key practical questions you’ll need to answer:
- Where is your church located? Is your local church in or working in an area of deprivation where families are struggling to put food on the table?
- Do you have enough volunteers to staff a grocery? Could you recruit a team of volunteers from within your church to support the Community Grocery store manager each week? On average you’ll need around 15-20 volunteers so that you can have 2 – 4 helping in store each day.
- Do you have enough volunteers to run courses? We ask our church partners to organise and run a minimum of three support sessions a week for their members. Would you be able to do this? Courses could include CAP Debt Counselling, Alpha, job clubs, cookery classes, to name just a few.
- Do you have accessible, ground-floor space available? This needs to be:
- in a building owned by the church or available rent free
- minimum of 15m sq for the shop, plus an additional storage space
- ideally, front-facing to the street with a shop window – we want our groceries to look and feel like a high street shop as much as possible
Enquiry Form
If you answered ‘yes’ to the questions above, we’d love to hear from you.