As part of its 125th anniversary celebration, Belletetes stores have collected 40,000 pounds of food to donate to the New Hampshire and Massachusetts food banks.
The majority of the donation headed to the New Hampshire Food Bank in Manchester on Thursday in a convoy of Belletetes trucks. The Jaffrey-based company held a month-long food drive in August across all nine of its storefronts in New Hampshire and Massachusetts – including Jaffrey and Peterborough — in honor of Hunger Action Month, which is a nationwide awareness campaign in August that encourages individuals and businesses to act to fight hunger.
Nancy Mellitt, director of development for the New Hampshire Food Bank, said the organization relies heavily on donations, and Belletetes’ donation was especially significant.
“Food drives vary in size, but 40,000 pounds is a lot of food – that’s a huge food drive,” Mellitt said.
The New Hampshire Food Bank is a program of Catholic Charities New Hampshire, and is the state’s only food bank. In 2022, the food bank distributed more than 16 million pounds of food through food pantries, neighborhood centers, low-income housing sites, senior nutrition centers, family crisis centers, hospices, soup kitchens, emergency shelters, after-school programs and day care centers.
Mellitt said the donation is the equivalent of approximately 33,333 meals, which will be distributed from the food bank’s central location to food pantries across the state.
Food collected at the Belletetes Winchendon, Mass., location, will remain in the Winchendon area, distributed through the Worcester County Food Bank.
Mellitt said donations, particularly cash donations, are critical to the operation of the food bank. She said food insecurity is a major issue in the state. In a 2020 study, Feeding America, the parent organization for the New Hampshire Food Bank, determined that 7% of New Hampshire residents are food insecure, and when looking solely at children under the age of 18, that percentage is about 8.5%.
Anecdotally, Mellitt said that statistic is only likely to have risen in the past few years, as inflation increased prices of basic necessities across the board, and particularly in grocery bills.
“Everyone knows this from a personal standpoint – groceries have seen major increases,” Mellitt said.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 603-924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on X @AshleySaariMLT.