The saying “all good things come to an end” rings true for the Lake Country Food Bank’s Thrift Store.
The Thrift Store on Berry Road has become a victim of the pandemic and will close by the end of April.
“The past two years have been really tough,” said Joy Haxton, Lake Country Food Bank, executive director.
“The issue that we had with COVID was the number of people we could have in the store and that’s made it really difficult. I think we’ve had the store closed for 12 months over the last two years.”
Since the thrift store opened eight years ago it has had a huge impact on the community and surrounding area. For instance, it helped finance an expansion of the food bank and the food recovery program.
“To have the food recovery program has been absolutely amazing,” said Haxton.
“The first year we went into the thrift store that was to 20,000 pounds of organic vegetables. So we shared that out with other food banks but they were only open once a month. The small food banks: Armstrong, Lumby, Cherryville, Chase, they started to open up weekly just to distribute what we were getting.”
Last year, more than half a million pounds of food was saved from the landfill and distributed thanks to the thrift shop’s profits, which were stretched even further thanks to volunteers.
“The donations from the community have been amazing and the volunteers that have put in thousands of hours,” Haxton said.
The building has also been leased to them at cost so the Lake Country Food Bank can help feed even more people in need.
The store will open to the public once again on March 3 on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and will close the last week of April. For more information, visit their Facebook page.
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