The sheer cost of a weekly shop affecting our Foodbank giving

Lets talk about the sheer cost of food at the moment. It not just feels like it, but it really hurts when you get to the till and your weekly shopping bill continues to rise. I’m not talking about sides of smoked salmon, fresh caviar, or bottles of champagne – I’m talking about food staples: everyday items of food such as minced meat for a family Bolognese, or a packet of pasta to feed a hungry family, or cereals to cover breakfast. These food staples are simply going up in price. There’s no other way to put it.  An article I saw on the BBC last week here (High meat and tea costs drive up food prices https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c627gpekvw3o ) mentioned that food costs have risen by £275 per year. This is not an insignificant amount. The article mentions that the cost of chicken had doubled. I can vouch for this as I participate in our weekly food shop and we’ve noticed the huge leap up in the final cost. We bulk at the sheer cost increases we are seeing. To me it feels unfair to not just slightly increase the price of something, but in some instances the price has doubled. It can feel to myself and my wife that we haven’t even left the fruit and veg aisle of the supermarket and you’re already around the £50 mark. To eat fresh and healthy should NOT cost as much as it does.

And we haven’t even mentioned the cost of living in terms of housing. What about the cost of rent? I saw another article from the BBC that Belfast is in top spot (number 1) as the rental location with the highest increase in rental costs, revealing an 11.6 % increase in rental costs. (See this helpful BBC article here – ‘On my budget I could only rent a parking space’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyxp280dxwo ) The burden for those facing mounting rental costs must be staggering. No wonder people turn to charities and foodbanks such as ours.

Hunger or food poverty is never one-dimensional. Hunger is often when several factors all combine and intersect, such as low income, high rent and lack of health support. See this really helpful graphic produced by Trussell on their Instagram account recently here: The complexity of hunger from Trussell Instagram account:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DMqa14yApOR/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

It’s an obvious conclusion that when several factors combine, people are unable to cope with covering the everyday essential costs that life presents such as food, shopping, clothing, and housing to name just a few. It is inevitable that more and more, people are forced to turn to others to help – often to charities such as ours.

But why is this so concerning? Well, it’s concerning to us all as we all need to eat, to purchase food from the supermarkets and put meals on the table. But as a Foodbank manager, it’s doubly concerning as we’ve seen a very real dip in actual physical food donations. We’ve seen a marked decrease in actual food donations. Our monthly average amount of food donated in KG has decreased by 26% from 2024 to 2025. Every month of this year so far (2025 Jan-June), we’ve seen more food go out to people in need then be donated into our project  -and that trend isn’t sustainable.

Less and less food is being put into our cages – and I can only assume that people who have supported us in the past – week in week out – are now having to make little changes and adjustments to their giving. They have decided – or are being forced to decide – to either not give any longer or to decrease their giving to our foodbank because of the high cost of the weekly shop. And this is completely understandable, and we thank everyone who has ever given to our foodbank in the past. This means we have less food in our warehouse and that means stock levels are reaching a really concerning amount. And with referrals to our project continuing as they are – our warehouse shelves will soon be empty.

The short term answer for our low food stock levels is to organise and run a key food drive – and we just so happen to be running one right now at Tesco Newtownbreda between Wednesday 6^th August and Friday 8^th August 2025 between 10am and 6pm. If you can and are able to, you could get involved in helping us collect items of food from shoppers for 2 hours. We do this by giving out shopping lists and gently asking if shoppers would mind supporting our charity through an item of food or two. Sign up here: https://doodle.com/group-poll/participate/b6K5LlQd

Longer term, our governments both locally at Stormont and at nationally at Westminster need to do more to protect people from falling into poverty. More must be done to drive up the weekly financial amount that claimants on Universal Credit rely on. The Guarantee Our Essentials campaign run together by Trussell and The Joseph Roundtree Foundation must be supported and championed until it is established and implemented. And finally, the price of staple food items must be controlled and managed and go back down or worse it yet to come. More and more families will continue to struggle to make ends meet and be forced to use foodbanks  -and that is not right nor is it the answer.

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